Lived Experience Forum

[Eden1919]

 does anyone else have multiple diagnosis i have Bipolar 1, OCD, BPD, Depersonalisation Disorder, Social anxiety and possibly Panic disorder. i know that is alot but does anyone else have a couple of diagnosis? 

[Eden1919]

I guess I am alone then.....

[Former-Member]

Hi @Eden1919

Nope you're definitely not alone, I know lots of people on here have multiple dx (i do..), lots of the MI's sort of go hand in hand in some ways. Might just be that people are not wantng to share their mi's, im not sure. 

I know it can be overwhelming to have so many labels. I have tried to just look at my goals of what i want to improve rather than 'everythig' all at once. and tried to sort of triage the things that were most affecting me. Its hard sometimes though. 

lj

[Phoenix_Rising]

Hi @Eden1919, it's nice to meet you.

I only identify as having one psychiatric diagnosis - BPD. I also have Asperger's but that isn't a mental illness.

I struggle a bit to understand the idea of many mental health diagnoses because of the substantial overlap between symptoms between different diagnoses. For example, I know a lot of mental health professionals would diagnose me with depression and anxiety. However, to me, my experiences of depression and anxiety can be readily conceptualized under the diagnosis of BPD. A key characteristic of BPD is emotional dysregulation, which means that I experience emotions at an unusally intense level and my big feelings can get triggered by things that wouldn't bother the majority of the population. So...given that I have BPD, it makes perfect sense under that label that I would experience depression and anxiety and thus it makes no sense to me to carry those extra diagnostic labels even though technically I "tick the boxes" to qualify for the diagnoses. I guess maybe this is an example of what @Former-Member said about many diagnoses going hand in hand. To me, I struggle with depression and anxiety BECAUSE I have BPD, not IN ADDITION to having BPD.

I am absolutely definitely NOT saying that a person can't have multiple diagnoses. However, I would, for example, be curious to know how a mental health professional would distinguish between Bipolar and BPD in the one person. That is, if I was diagnosed with both those conditions, I would want it clearly written down for me on what basis the clinican arrived at this dual diagnosis rather than thinking that one or other of the labels explained the difficulties I was having. This is because I know there is a huge amount of misdiagnosis that occurs between these conditions and given the overlap between symptoms, I struggle to understand how a dual diagnosis makes sense. I am a strong believer in the principle of Occam's Ra*or which states that we should try to look for the simplest explanation for any observed phenomenon.

Anyway, that's just my view. I respect that the views of others may differ.

[Kurra]

I agree entirely @Phoenix_Rising and had planned to write a similar reply @Eden1919. The point Phoenix Rising made about misdiagnosis between BPD and Bipolar is of particular interest. I too have observed this tendency. So often all these different MI labels are just parts of one MI. 😆