When seeing a psychiatrist for the first time, it is common for manic depressives to receive a wrong diagnosis. As very few of these individuals themselves suffer from mental illness, they are not adept at spotting the signs of mental illness. Case in point, it usually takes multiple doctors to receive a correct diagnosis.
The other problem in diagnosing bipolar disorder is that different moods can seem like different illnesses. For example, someone visiting a psychiatrist during a depressive phase may be diagnosed with major depressive disorder, as the psychiatrist has no idea of the full spectrum of one’s moods.
When a psychiatrist questions you, it is important to be honest and upfront about your symptoms. A competent psychiatrist will have a list of questions created specifically to determine your mental illness, as there is currently no pharmacological test for bipolar disorder.
Bipolar individuals can also have hallucinations during a psychotic phase, although this is rare. For this reason, a psychiatrist may offer a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia.
There exist medical conditions that can cause symptoms like that of bipolar disorder, such as thyroid malfunction. Substance abuse can simulate the mania and depression of bipolar disorder.
When visiting your doctor, it is important to understand and ask them how they arrived at your diagnosis, so that you can backtrack and double check that your diagnoses make sense.