How did you get Diagnosed w/Bipolar?

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Bipolar disorder is often quite difficult to spot. It can be especially hard to get an assesment if your doctor thinks everything can be chalked up to your aspergers.

So for those who got diagnosed with bipolar I would like to know how long it took you to get a diagnosis and what obstacles did you face in the process?

First obstacle: myself. I avoided doctors for a couple of years.
Second obstacle: my GP. Gave me antidepressants and refused a psychiatry referral.
Third obstacle: the hospital system. I was transferred to a hospital closer to home while still an inpatient with the idea things would flow better to outpatient services. Bad idea. The outpatient services could have started me off from the first hospital In the meantime, the consultant in the second hospital ignored the information from the first hospital and missed the diagnosis.
Fourth obstacle: the consultant at the second hospital. Not only did he ignore the information from the first hospital he didn't listen to me either.
Three years later, a diagnosis of bipolar I during hospitalisation for a manic episode.

I realise this if fairly quick, for most people. Still frustrating though.

The jackass I have for a psychiatrist had me diagnosed in 15 minutes, after I had a meltdown in my PCP's office. The PCP thought I was going to commit suicide, and had me shipped to the lock ward of the hospital.

This makes me worry. I'm not diagnosed yet, and now that my manic episode seems to finally be ending, I hesitate to find a doctor and go through it all. I don't have a regular doctor, so I'd have to start from scratch with a new one, and the only English-speaking one I've been able to find will charge me a pretty sizable portion of my salary per hour and doesn't accept any insurance. He says initial meetings and diagnosis usually take between 1 and 2 hours, which I suppose would be really fast compared to what others experience. But in this country, there seem to be a lot of doctors perfectly satisfied to let the patient self-diagnose, double-check that their self-diagnosis makes sense, and throw pills at them, which, in this particular situation, works to my advantage, since I likely won't have to spend a lot of time persuading someone that I'm not making it up for attention or what have you.

I'm concerned about even telling the doctor I'm autistic. I don't want him to blame autism for my symptoms. I know quite well which symptoms are autism and which are something else, but doctors tend to be misinformed and to think far too highly of their own qualifications, especially where autism is concerned. I have no idea how this particular doctor would react, and I'm tempted to not even mention it. I'm good enough at hiding it that I seriously doubt he'll pick up on it, and if I go in saying "I'm pretty sure I'm bipolar" I think it's likely that he'll focus on that and possibly even blame autism symptoms on bipolar.

So I guess I'm not sure what I should do. I'm very interested in what people will post here.

Go for the diagnosis you need the most help in. If you're already diagnosed with autism then it wouldn't matter if your doctor focused more of the bipolar, even if they tried to say your autism symptoms are more likely bipolar.

I'm not diagnosed yet too. I've already been the avoidance stage with staying on meds to feed my manic binges. Now I'm up to the getting jerked around by my psychiatrist stage where I see him over and over again and there's no promise of change or even a single prescription.

I'm concerned about the whole hospitalisation thing. Sometimes I think I'll only get diagnosed and properly medicated if I became so bad I'd need to be hospitalised, but I don't want that and I don't think I will need to be. But I'm kind of still trying to induce mania when I've been depressed for a while. Sometimes I can just get small high but then I keep trying to make it bigger and then there are complications. I'm not sure how far I will go with it or if I'll end up in a hospital over it. My sister who is far worse than me hasn't been hospitalised in a long time.

I was 28 when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I saw a psychiatrist who specialized in bipolar disorder, who just so happened to an in network doctor for my insurance. But it took me a long time to get someone to listen to me, since I showed symptoms of it as early as 6th grade. But now, I have the opposite problem as you, OP. Everybody thinks my little quirks and idiosyncrasies are just due to being depressed or manic, so nobody will listen to me now about having Asperger's.

A child psychiatrist denied there was anything wrong with me, told me that all my problems were due to "worries about the transition into adulthood" and the usual teenage hormones, and discharged me from the mental health system telling me that there was nothing wrong with me. I ended up in hospital after a suicide attempt before a diagnosis was given.

In order to get a diagnosis of bipolar, does the doctor actually have to see you manic? Or is it enough to describe manic episodes, and the doctor can make a judgment based on that? If they have to see it, it seems like it would be very hard to get diagnosed, since there is no control over when manic episodes happen, and when they do happen, it might not be possible to rush straight to the doctor to show them...

I was in hospital with stress-induced hypomania in 1997. My AS diagnostician wrote that I displayed 'bipolar symptoms' when I was diagnosed in 2006. I had to go onto antipsychotics due to stress in 2009. And it was only then that anyone connected the dots.

My psychiatrist saw me the first time when I was horribly depressed. Over the course of treatment she would have me fill out questionnaires and describe to her different reactions I would have to certain stimulus. For example, what happened when I got angry, what types of impulsive behaviors I had and what would lead to it happening. She did see me having a manic episode once, but it wasn't severe.

I'm in the middle of a manic episode that's been going on for two weeks already and is getting even more severe. I'm trying to get an appointment with a doctor, but I don't see a regular psych doctor of any kind. What I need is immediate help, because this is getting dangerous. My hope is that when I describe all my symptoms, my depression, and my mania, the doctor will accept that bipolar is the best diagnosis and give me a prescription for lithium immediately. I don't have time to go through a long process of analysis, and I don't have the money to pay for all that. I mean, it's not like people are abusing lithium to get high, right? It doesn't seem to offer any recreational benefits. So I don't see why the doc would refuse to give me a prescription when I'm clearly in desperate need of a mood stabilizer... Yet it sounds like most people here had to go through a lot of nonsense to get their diagnosis.

If you go to the doctor and say "I'm pretty sure I'm bipolar" then explain the reasons why, do they just flat-out refuse to listen to you? Or was the reason for delay for so many of you simply because you didn't know what was wrong with you and had to wait for the doctors to figure it out from scratch?

Is it? I was under the impression that it was fairly easy to get that diagnosis. Maybe it's just here in Sweden that it's a popular diagnosis, I don't know. When I decided to go to a psychiatrist to get a formal Asperger diagnosis I was afraid that the psychiatrist would just give me a bipolar diagnosis and fail to recognize that I have Asperger's. I was absolutely sure that I was going to get a bipolar diagnosis just by showing up but I wrote an essay explaining my aspergian issues.

I had to wait 3,5 months for an appointment to the psychiatrist, after that I had the diagnosis after a few weeks (a nurse had interviewed me before this and I had done some questionnaires at home at her request).
I didn't want the bipolar diagnosis so that stood in the way. I decided it was worth it for the Asperger diagnosis though which I felt was important. But I don't want any meds or anything and mostly just pretend that I don't have bipolar disorder if I'm not very hypomanic, in those periods I'm obsessed about having it. Actually I'm only writing in this thread because I'm a bit hypomanic, haha. The irony.

A team of doctors diagnosed me with Schizoaffective Bipolar disorder type I, after I had a psychotic break. I spent a month and a half in a hospital.

I finally got my diagnosis yesterday. The first doctor I saw treated me like a hypochondriac and said that it sounds like nothing is wrong with me and I just just not worry about it. Fortunately I got a recommendation for a better doctor and in 20 minutes of talking, me describing my history and current situation and answering a few questions he had, he said that what I described was "clearly" mania, that it sounds like I have bipolar I, and he is starting me on medication to prevent further episodes. I even told him about my AS and he took a few notes about my autism-related problems, but he agreed that autism does not cause these type of manic episodes, so that doesn't in any way prevent diagnosis of bipolar.

So it seems that if you are fortunate enough to find a good doctor who actually listens to you and takes you seriously, the diagnosis is not too difficult. They just need a description of what you experienced during a manic episode, what your friends/family say about how you acted during this period, and some of your general history. Apparently the biggest barrier to people getting a diagnosis is that doctors simply don't believe their patients and treat them like lying hypochondriacs. And the only solution I've found is to keep looking for a better doctor, although I know very well how difficult that can be depending on where you live, what the system is like, and what options are available to you.

What do you mean by that it's getting dangerous? If you can't get an appointment with a doctor, what about emergency psych ward?
There is some stuff that I find useful to prevent or to calm down a manic episode:
- Writing. Just write out every thought in a notebook or on the computer without censoring yourself. It's cleansing. This writing is for no other purpose than to get it out, don't waste time on searching for the right word or correcting grammatical errors.
- Do creative stuff. I write songs, poems etc. Some might like painting or home decorating or making jewelry. Creative output is important.
- Going to the countryside (if possible, if not go to a park). Hug trees. Sit with them and channel into their naturally calm and accepting state of mind. Ask them to reveal their secret.
- Sleep. Try to have discipline and don't stay up all night even if it feels like you don't need any or very little sleep. If you don't sleep, at least lay in bed in a dark room with your eyes closed. Observe your thoughts. Just observe them. They're just thoughts. Try not to judge your thoughts or yourself. Don't even judge yourself for judging
- Use logic to neutralize paranoid thoughts. Recognize that you're in a manic state without freaking out about it, and if you do freak out, recognize that freaking out is a part of it as well.

Just be accepting and know that all will pass eventually.

This is just my way of coping with it. I don't know if it can help somebody else, I guess that's possible. What I do think could help everyone is learning more about how it manifests in you, and for that observing yourself and writing your thoughts are the best tools.

I appreciate the advice and hope that it will help someone, but I'm afraid it's not too useful to me. It sounds from what you describe that you get hypomania. I had severe mania - with extreme paranoia. I tried to write but I couldn't. Even thinking about drawing or painting something made my anxiety shoot up through the roof. In fact, trying to do *anything* other than writhe around feeling like there were ants under my skin made my anxiety go up. It was like a meltdown that lasted 2.5 weeks. When I got on public transportation, everyone around me looked like monsters, like they wanted to rape me, or eat me. When I closed my eyes, my thoughts raced even faster. When I tried to lie down, it was like ants crawling under my skin, and when I did manage to sleep about 2-3 hours per night, I had nonstop horrific nightmares that made me wake up sweating and shaking, desperate to turn the lights on but too afraid to get out of bed. When I one night decided "hell with it, I'm going out with my friends" and went to a party, I drank a dangerous amount of alcohol and chased it with some drugs - it took several of my friends to babysit me and stop me from going home with a shady stranger, and when I decided I was finished, I walked home through the entire city at 3.30 in the morning (about an hour's walk). One night, I decided I was desperate to sleep, after 2 weeks of getting around 2-3 hours per night, so I drank 2 beers, 3 cups of strong sedative tea, and used that to wash down a diazepam (valium). I still couldn't sleep.

Oh, and I'm an elementary school teacher. So you can probably see how maybe this was dangerous. It took an incredible amount of alcohol in the evenings to keep me from doing something to hurt myself, and constant sedative tea and lots of help from my co-teachers to keep me under control during my lessons. I did have to cancel all my private lessons, but I managed my base 16 hours of teaching without having to stay home, which is good, because I live alone and staying home by myself only made the thoughts get worse.

In any case, it ended a week ago, and as you can see in my last post, I finally saw a good doctor yesterday, got my diagnosis, and will be starting medication.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, going to an emergency center in this country is equivalent to voluntarily committing yourself. I'm here on a work visa and if I don't earn enough money per month, I lose that visa and would be deported. Not to mention the inability to support myself if I'm not working (I'm on a business license and don't get any paid time off).