Quote:
Originally Posted by LaFin
I have a question for you. How are you diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and depression? As far as I understand it you can't be diagnosed with both of those at the same time, and I'm curious as to why your doctor came to that solution? Is there a special situation where you would be diagnosed as both?
Oh and also what kind of bipolar disorder do you have?
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I'm 99.9% sure you're right on that. Although maybe the
OP initially was diagnosed with one, then it was changed to the other? Like, Bipolar Type II commonly gets misdiagnosed as Depression because of the less frequent, and less intense manic/hypomanic episodes, that usually don't get taken into consideration as much, I guess.
And the REASON its not possible to have both Bipolar and Depression is because, well, Depression is considered a Unipolar disorder, whereas Bipolar is, well, bipolar. Basically, its like this...
Depression
|_________| Middle line representing normal mood, dotted line showing the depressed's mood
|--------------|
Bipolar
|/\_ _/~| Fluxuating mood, going past both positive and negative sides of the normal spectrum, for lack of a better way to put it.
| ...\/.... | (Dots there to compensate for spacing issues)
Thus the reason why a dual diagnosis makes no sense.