?Que tu y yo estamos locos Lucas?

HOW TO SURVIVE TO A MENTAL DIAGNOSIS

Have you ever been diagnosed with some sort of mental health problem? ?What if I tell you that maybe your diagnosis could be wrong? ??

This week, I will continue talking about mental health but now I will share with you some incredible cases such as the journalist Susannah Calahan, one of my heros doctor Mark Hyman, princess Alice of Battenberg and some others that were misdiagnosed with mental illnesses

As a petition, I will write in English (sorry for the inconveniences) ??

I will start with Susannah. She wrote her first book called Brain on Fire, ?? that indeed, was also an inspiration for me to write my next book which I am finally ending ??

In her book she shared what she called "her month of madness", a time when she went through been diagnosed with stress related to work and some alcohol problems until been diagnosed with schizophrenia and been hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. ??

But she wasn't mentally ill. It was just after a neurologist did a simple test he discovered her problem was a neurological dysfunction due to an autoimmune encephalitis.

After her experience and all she discovered during that time, she decided to write a second book called The Great Pretender, refering to her own condition and some others that often, as she mentioned, mimic psychiatric conditions.

Susannah also refer how mental illnesses and Psychiatry could become a minefield. And those who practice this discipline are often limited by the tools they have, mostly observation of the symptoms of their patients and interviews with family and friends with no objective tests

Luckily, now we have a discipline called Precision Medicine which indeed can help with that) ??

She warns to the reader about how she was treated in the hospital setting called her not as person but as "interesting case" ?? and dosing her with unnecessary amounts of antipsychotic medications.

One of the major problems she found is that when the doctors couldn′t immediately found a physical cause, nothing like an infection or tumor, then they move to a possible diagnosis of some mental problem such as bipolar or schizoaffective disorder as her case.

She had the symptoms for been diagnosed with that, but was not her case.

As I learned, THAT is the importance to rule a good diagnosis, because the same symptoms can relate to different conditions. ??

This, is not a problem only related to psychiatric practice. As she mentioned

The odds are high that in your lifetime you will one day suffer from a disease whose causes and treatments are still unknown, or you will face a meaningful medical error that could delay proper treatment, hurt you or contribute to the cause of your death

That is the case of opiate epidemic in the US and around the world. Unfortunately, most doctor don′t know much about chronic pain, however overprescriptions of pain medications ?? are done.

Medicine, as she noted, and a good friend of mine few years ago also, frequently operates more on faith than certainty. But the problem with Psychiatry is that this discipline

makes judgement about people - about our personalities, our beliefs, our morality

In other specialities, this rarely occurs

IT WILL CONTINUES...

Have you been misdiagnosed with some mental or other health condition? Share your own story!

If you like to learn more about your mental heath and how to improve it, please CONTACT ME

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THIS ARTICLE IS ORIGINAL FROM THE AUTHOR, SHE HAVEN′T USED CHAT GPT NOR ANY OTHER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM

Acerca de mi

Claudia Juárez es Psicóloga Clínica, Especialista en Estrés y Consultora en Salud y Bienestar Corporativo. Dirige?Transforma tu Estrés , Consultoría Especializada en el Manejo de Estrés Organizacional e Individual. Conferencista y tallerista sobre Manejo de Estrés, Resiliencia, Inteligencia Emocional, Balance de Vida entre otros. Consultora y capacitadora NOM035. Autora del libro?Todo lo que quería saber sobre el estrés de la A a la Z , publicado por Manual Moderno (2019).

Soy también consultora en procesos de cambio organizacional (Change Management) y personal, y practicante certificada de la metodología Heartmath ??