Mis diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder

It is a huge and growing problem and I'm sorry to hear how badly you have been impacted.

Far too often people share stories on here and elsewhere of their previous misdiagnoses. How many more have been affected. Many will feel unable to speak out. Many more could still be unaware. How many will have taken their own lives needlessly, while never learning the truth about who they are.

Autistic females are often misdiagnosed with personality disorders. My mum was before I was born, yet medics never told her. She found out years later, after requesting her medical records for something else. By then they could not even tell her what type of personality disorder she supposedly has, only that it can never be removed from her medical records. It would certainly explain a lot about how she has been treated over the years and constantly disbelieved.

Then there has been the unquantified negative impact on me, from the meds she was on all the way through her pregnancy and most of my childhood. Those meds, as in your case, having massive negative implications for her physical health too. As a result I've been very wary about taking meds for my anxiety. On the occasions I was bullied by my GP into taking antidepressants the results were almost catastrophically negative and traumatic.

It is interesting that they fear being sued for medical negligence. It is certainly my experience that services are more interested in closing ranks and covering their own backs than helping someone in distress. I wonder if this kind of issue will be the next thing to come to the attention of the ambulance chasing lawyers.

Please do let us know how you get on. If you do not already have an advocate, who can support you in the process, that is worth looking into.

It is a huge and growing problem and I'm sorry to hear how badly you have been impacted.

Far too often people share stories on here and elsewhere of their previous misdiagnoses. How many more have been affected. Many will feel unable to speak out. Many more could still be unaware. How many will have taken their own lives needlessly, while never learning the truth about who they are.

Autistic females are often misdiagnosed with personality disorders. My mum was before I was born, yet medics never told her. She found out years later, after requesting her medical records for something else. By then they could not even tell her what type of personality disorder she supposedly has, only that it can never be removed from her medical records. It would certainly explain a lot about how she has been treated over the years and constantly disbelieved.

Then there has been the unquantified negative impact on me, from the meds she was on all the way through her pregnancy and most of my childhood. Those meds, as in your case, having massive negative implications for her physical health too. As a result I've been very wary about taking meds for my anxiety. On the occasions I was bullied by my GP into taking antidepressants the results were almost catastrophically negative and traumatic.

It is interesting that they fear being sued for medical negligence. It is certainly my experience that services are more interested in closing ranks and covering their own backs than helping someone in distress. I wonder if this kind of issue will be the next thing to come to the attention of the ambulance chasing lawyers.

Please do let us know how you get on. If you do not already have an advocate, who can support you in the process, that is worth looking into.

I am female btw, plus in 2021/22 they were also trying to pin EUPD(BPD) on me ! They didn’t complete that process thankfully 

Thanks so much for your helpful and supportive post, I really do appreciate it. It’s been hugely illuminating learning and understanding how my autism has impacted my life to date, I do appreciate that at the time I was diagnosed with bipolar understanding about autism was less than it is now but seriously, just reading DSM5 shows that they made a serious mistake even without the knowledge that I was autistic. I feel partially responsible, though do get that I shouldn’t, in that I so desperately wanted help with the pain and chaos in my mind that I enthusiastically went along with their diagnosis and embraced, at least initially, the medication treatment, but they as professionals should have understood that and been more rigorous rather than just the very quick assessment followed by twenty years of heavy duty psych meds (anti psychotics, anti depressants and sometimes mood stabilisers). The contrast between the 40 minute diagnostic assessment for bipolar and the 8 hour assessment for ASC is deplorable.