From M.S.
In 2008, I endured a period in which I had multiple stressors, including major life changes — a move, the life-threatening illness of my mother, marital strife, and isolation from friends, as well as months of unexplained physical pain that medications and therapy had not reduced. At this time I also began menopause, which was causing me concern about aging. As a result, I experienced mood changes, downheartedness and sadness, severe anxiety, and eventually, insomnia. I sought counseling, because I’d previously found it very helpful during rough times. The individual I consulted was a psychiatrist (covered under my health plan).
Though I specifically stated I wanted to work through my psychological difficulties without drugs, my psychiatrist convinced me to consider medication. Once a person is diagnosed with a DSM label, it is highly likely that psychotropic drugs will be prescribed. The doctor suggested that an antidepressant might make it easier to deal with my various stressors. I was suffering enough that I agreed, and I later attended a “medication management” session in which a more senior psychiatrist was brought in to assess my condition before the prescription was written.
Seeing that I tend to be very energetic and a fast talker, this psychiatrist suggested that I might have Bipolar II Disorder. I was very frightened about what was happening to me, but the DSM listing for Bipolar II Disorder does not require investigating the reasons for such behavior. I stated that I strongly doubted that I had Bipolar II Disorder and said that I was panicky and downhearted, so the psychiatrist prescribed the antidepressant Tofranil. When I took the Tofranil, I became more agitated, had some strange Tourette’s-like symptoms, and started acting in bizarre ways. As a result, I wound up in the psychiatric emergency room. I told my regular psychiatrist I couldn’t function anymore, so she suggested I go into hospital for a few days to be watched and to get a closer look at what was going on.
I subsequently spent one week in a psychiatric hospital, where I reiterated to a different psychiatrist that I was feeling sad and downhearted due to the still chronic, debilitating physical pain and my severe anxieties about aging, my mother, and unhappiness with life in general. He diagnosed me with Major Depressive Disorder and prescribed a different antidepressant, Remeron. That drug made me feel even more agitated than before I entered the hospital (and later also gave me Tourette’s-like symptoms), so the hospital psychiatrist added Klonopin to my regimen.
I still didn’t want to be on any drugs, and I wanted to find someone who could better help me work through my personal problems, so after leaving the hospital, I sought yet another psychiatrist to help me taper off. Instead, she diagnosed me with Bipolar II Disorder, using the term “Hypomania.” She told me I was in denial when I objected to the diagnosis. At a later meeting she told me talk therapy would do me no good because I was “sick.” I now understand that it is commonly assumed that if one has a DSM label, only medical treatments will help. After briefly trying several different medications unsuccessfully, the psychiatrist ultimately put me on a high dose of the antipsychotic Zyprexa, and within about a week of starting it, I was back in the ER with a bad reaction to the drug. Among other things, I had severely stiff muscles, confusion, compromised short-term memory, and still didn’t feel better psychologically.
Throughout the entire process, both my husband and I insisted these were wrong diagnoses, but because of my being stimulated by antidepressants, which have been described as actually having a stimulant effect, doctors didn’t want to listen.
Fortunately, the head of psychiatry at the hospital where I spent the night after the Zyprexa overdose practices functional medicine. He suggested that nutritional therapies might help me. I began seeing him and soon found out that I indeed had many nutritional issues, including very low vitamin B12, which can sometimes cause symptoms that are labeled as psychiatric disorders. Once I started various nutritional therapies and found another talk therapist who was compassionate and took the time to understand my personal problems that had been mislabeled as Bipolar II Disorder, I made rapid progress.
My new psychotherapist’s approach was eclectic but was based primarily on Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Most importantly, she helped me rebuild my sense of myself as someone who had inner resources. Both she and the aforementioned holistic psychiatrist agreed that I was not “bipolar” after all. Today, I am free of drugs and psychological symptoms.
Prior to this successful treatment, I was diagnosed with allegedly psychiatric illnesses without other causes of my difficulties being considered. The DSM listings do not warn against this omission. That is, following what is in the DSM, life problems that could easily explain what I was feeling need not be ruled out in order to classify me as mentally ill. Thus I was quickly slapped with labels based on categories that are not scientifically based and thus can easily be applied to ordinary problems in living, mistaking them for signs of an alleged defective brain or chemical imbalance.
Had I not fought these alarming diagnoses, I might still today believe them to be accurate. I might never have discovered several underlying, easily correctible physical reasons for some of my symptoms. I might never have addressed the problems in living that paralyzed me. And I might still be taking some sort of unnecessary, debilitating, and very risky drug.
Some of the most compelling evidence that I did not have a mental illness is that now, doing nothing that would be recommended for someone so afflicted, I feel fine and balanced, am productive at work, and have positive social interactions. Any feelings of anxiety or sadness that I experience are situation-related and fleeting.
As a result of receiving these diagnoses, I suffered many kinds of harm that would not have occurred if the diagnoses given to me did not supposedly carry the weight of being scientifically grounded, serious mental illnesses.
Losses incurred:
-I was put on drugs that are prescribed for serious mental illnesses, and these drugs had serious negative effects, including a narrowly averted possible case of neuroleptic malignant syndrome. In addition to the effects already noted, the Remeron clouded my thinking and verbal ability and the Zyprexa made my muscles so stiff I could not type or hold a pen to write. Both of these problems restricted my ability to do professional work and to engage in the ordinary tasks of living.
-The reason the negative drug effects were so late in being identified as drug-caused was that I had been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. Thus the drug effects were misinterpreted as signs of my supposed mental disorders.
-Because of getting the Bipolar II diagnosis, I was not helped to deal with the real causes of my initial upset. I understand that often happens when a psychiatric diagnosis is given, because the diagnosis implies that the upset is caused by a “broken brain” or a chemical imbalance.
- I was stripped of a sense that I was a person who could heal through my own agency. Being diagnosed made me feel I was defective and helpless, the worst possible framing for someone undergoing a personal crisis.
-The diagnoses of Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar II Disorder remain in my medical records and thus will continue to follow me.
Though I specifically stated I wanted to work through my psychological difficulties without drugs, my psychiatrist convinced me to consider medication. Once a person is diagnosed with a DSM label, it is highly likely that psychotropic drugs will be prescribed. The doctor suggested that an antidepressant might make it easier to deal with my various stressors. I was suffering enough that I agreed, and I later attended a “medication management” session in which a more senior psychiatrist was brought in to assess my condition before the prescription was written.
Seeing that I tend to be very energetic and a fast talker, this psychiatrist suggested that I might have Bipolar II Disorder. I was very frightened about what was happening to me, but the DSM listing for Bipolar II Disorder does not require investigating the reasons for such behavior. I stated that I strongly doubted that I had Bipolar II Disorder and said that I was panicky and downhearted, so the psychiatrist prescribed the antidepressant Tofranil. When I took the Tofranil, I became more agitated, had some strange Tourette’s-like symptoms, and started acting in bizarre ways. As a result, I wound up in the psychiatric emergency room. I told my regular psychiatrist I couldn’t function anymore, so she suggested I go into hospital for a few days to be watched and to get a closer look at what was going on.
I subsequently spent one week in a psychiatric hospital, where I reiterated to a different psychiatrist that I was feeling sad and downhearted due to the still chronic, debilitating physical pain and my severe anxieties about aging, my mother, and unhappiness with life in general. He diagnosed me with Major Depressive Disorder and prescribed a different antidepressant, Remeron. That drug made me feel even more agitated than before I entered the hospital (and later also gave me Tourette’s-like symptoms), so the hospital psychiatrist added Klonopin to my regimen.
I still didn’t want to be on any drugs, and I wanted to find someone who could better help me work through my personal problems, so after leaving the hospital, I sought yet another psychiatrist to help me taper off. Instead, she diagnosed me with Bipolar II Disorder, using the term “Hypomania.” She told me I was in denial when I objected to the diagnosis. At a later meeting she told me talk therapy would do me no good because I was “sick.” I now understand that it is commonly assumed that if one has a DSM label, only medical treatments will help. After briefly trying several different medications unsuccessfully, the psychiatrist ultimately put me on a high dose of the antipsychotic Zyprexa, and within about a week of starting it, I was back in the ER with a bad reaction to the drug. Among other things, I had severely stiff muscles, confusion, compromised short-term memory, and still didn’t feel better psychologically.
Throughout the entire process, both my husband and I insisted these were wrong diagnoses, but because of my being stimulated by antidepressants, which have been described as actually having a stimulant effect, doctors didn’t want to listen.
Fortunately, the head of psychiatry at the hospital where I spent the night after the Zyprexa overdose practices functional medicine. He suggested that nutritional therapies might help me. I began seeing him and soon found out that I indeed had many nutritional issues, including very low vitamin B12, which can sometimes cause symptoms that are labeled as psychiatric disorders. Once I started various nutritional therapies and found another talk therapist who was compassionate and took the time to understand my personal problems that had been mislabeled as Bipolar II Disorder, I made rapid progress.
My new psychotherapist’s approach was eclectic but was based primarily on Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Most importantly, she helped me rebuild my sense of myself as someone who had inner resources. Both she and the aforementioned holistic psychiatrist agreed that I was not “bipolar” after all. Today, I am free of drugs and psychological symptoms.
Prior to this successful treatment, I was diagnosed with allegedly psychiatric illnesses without other causes of my difficulties being considered. The DSM listings do not warn against this omission. That is, following what is in the DSM, life problems that could easily explain what I was feeling need not be ruled out in order to classify me as mentally ill. Thus I was quickly slapped with labels based on categories that are not scientifically based and thus can easily be applied to ordinary problems in living, mistaking them for signs of an alleged defective brain or chemical imbalance.
Had I not fought these alarming diagnoses, I might still today believe them to be accurate. I might never have discovered several underlying, easily correctible physical reasons for some of my symptoms. I might never have addressed the problems in living that paralyzed me. And I might still be taking some sort of unnecessary, debilitating, and very risky drug.
Some of the most compelling evidence that I did not have a mental illness is that now, doing nothing that would be recommended for someone so afflicted, I feel fine and balanced, am productive at work, and have positive social interactions. Any feelings of anxiety or sadness that I experience are situation-related and fleeting.
As a result of receiving these diagnoses, I suffered many kinds of harm that would not have occurred if the diagnoses given to me did not supposedly carry the weight of being scientifically grounded, serious mental illnesses.
Losses incurred:
-I was put on drugs that are prescribed for serious mental illnesses, and these drugs had serious negative effects, including a narrowly averted possible case of neuroleptic malignant syndrome. In addition to the effects already noted, the Remeron clouded my thinking and verbal ability and the Zyprexa made my muscles so stiff I could not type or hold a pen to write. Both of these problems restricted my ability to do professional work and to engage in the ordinary tasks of living.
-The reason the negative drug effects were so late in being identified as drug-caused was that I had been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. Thus the drug effects were misinterpreted as signs of my supposed mental disorders.
-Because of getting the Bipolar II diagnosis, I was not helped to deal with the real causes of my initial upset. I understand that often happens when a psychiatric diagnosis is given, because the diagnosis implies that the upset is caused by a “broken brain” or a chemical imbalance.
- I was stripped of a sense that I was a person who could heal through my own agency. Being diagnosed made me feel I was defective and helpless, the worst possible framing for someone undergoing a personal crisis.
-The diagnoses of Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar II Disorder remain in my medical records and thus will continue to follow me.