So I was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder five years ago. I no longer live in that area but my regular psychiatrist doesn’t dispute the diagnosis. However any time I have to “check in”, as I call it, into a psychiatric center the attending psychiatrist always wants to diagnose me with bi- polar. I feel that this doesn’t take into consideration my hallucinations and delusions and feels borderline invalidating to the reality of what I go through. Has anyone else experienced this?
It’s actually not uncommon for those with bipolar to experience psychotic symptoms during mania so it’s not unreasonable. Do you only become psychotic when you’re manic (or depressed?)? Or do you have psychosis even when you’re not in a mood episode? The first suggests bipolar w psychotic features, the second suggests schizoaffective.
Either way specific diagnosis isn’t that important especially when sza and bipolar are so similar in the first place, so I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.
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I hear voices everyday on top of constantly battling paranoia. The visual hallucinations and delusions seem to only happen when I’m manic. I’m not too worried about the diagnosis as it ultimately doesn’t change my existence in the slightest. I mostly just wanted to vent it out because my mind likes to obsess on things like that which then has the potential to turn into a delusion if left bottled up.
Why don’t you have the doctors at the psychiatric center call, e-mail, or fax your regular doctor so they can straighten this out between them about your diagnosis? They need to talk about this so there’s no confusion in case of a real emergency and you need to be treated right away. If it’s a real emergency or a life or death situation you don’t want valuable time wasted in your treatment because you have two conflicting diagnoses. Everybody involved needs to be on the same page.
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That’s not a bad idea. I’ll bring that up. Thank you.
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