Posted by sunny10 on January 26, 2005, at 9:20:05
In reply to Therapist's response to a medical diagnosis?, posted by pretty_paints on January 26, 2005, at 7:26:27
I can only tell you what I have been told. So far, no "specialist" has disagreed (but sometimes they "decide" not to disagree, I think!).
For the record, my diagnoses have been as follows:
Major Depression -through high school
BiPolar Depression - in late twenties
Recurrent Major Depression with GAD- in thirtiesAnd although they do not all agree with the actual NAMES of the diagnoses, they have all agreed that in my case it is recurrent. That either my body does not produce enough neurotransmitting chemicals, or the receptors do not work correctly, so I don't "maintain" enough of the chemicals.
One of the doctors took the time to explain that the chemicals "help maintain a balance" and that if I was not producing enough, or maintaining enough, of these balancing chemicals, that I would eventually "run out" of them and suffer a "relapse" of the Major Depression. The one that suggested that I was BiPolar was suggesting that I had periods of hypomania, but did not disagree with the prior explanation. His opinion was that it didn't matter WHY I did hypomanic things when my brain chemicals began to tank, but almost every episode HAS started as mild depression, gone over to total anger at myself and self-destructive things (I threw away, or gave to Goodwill, all of my belongings once while planning to "go away for good". At the time, I convinced myself that I was just leaving town, but I was really just cleaning out my apartment so that my landlord wouldn't have to deal with it "after").
The general theme, here, is that they all agreed in BOTH nurture and nature- that chemicals "gone bad" (in whatever way) in the brain can be exacerbated by periods of "the blues" that people without chemical issues can get through without falling into depression or acting out hypomanically.
I'm not sure if that helps you, but I did make things a little more clear for me.
-sunny10
poster:sunny10
thread:447985
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050122/msgs/448024.html