Psychiatrist couldn't diagnose me

[Guest biffnon]

Has anybody else ever experienced this? I'm feeling incredibly deflated right now. Finally got a referral to a psychiatrist from my doc and after an hour long chat the guy I saw struggled to diagnose me beyond having a lot of obsessive thoughts and health anxieties. The best he could suggest was perhaps a change in medication and carrying on with CBT.

A lot of my symptoms are routed in obsessions, some of which are quite abstract in nature. For example, I like to conjure up thoughts or sounds in my head that I tend to associate with schizophrenia in order to prove to myself that I'm not developing it. Ridiculous, I know. He found this incredibly strange and couldn't really understand it, even though in my heart I know it's more than likely just the creation of a chronically anxious, hypervigiliant mind that's being throttled by worry.

So have any of you guys experience abstract symptoms that you struggled to explain to a professional? Were you diagnosed? Or have you been misdiagnosed in the past?

Edited November 27, 2014 by biffnon

[Caramoole]

The best he could suggest was perhaps a change in medication and carrying on with CBT.

Which is the right choice for OCD. Even Psychiatrists don't always keep right up to spec on the vast array of ways OCD manifests.

[Guest Orwell1984]

Hi Biffnon, yes I have been there. And come through it. Your OCD will move onto something else. I used to hallucinate, particularly auditory hallucinations where I thought my phone was ringing but wasn't. I visually hallucinated once before too. I thought I saw a ghost or spectre. The mind is so powerful. The thing I saw was incredibly detailed and looked very real. This was at night and could have been a product of being half asleep. I was very very anxious at that time in my life. Anxiety can manifest in different things. Remember that schizophrenic people tend to not doubt whether their hallucinations/perceptions/ideas are real or not and are relatively convinced of their delusion whereas OCD people question everything that gets flagged up in their minds.

I have been misdiagnosed many times in the past. Unfortunately a lot of therapists and psychiatrists have no idea what 'purely obsessional' OCD is and are not aware of the internal compulsions or of the internal subject matter of some forms of obsessive thoughts eg relationships, worries about child abuse, worries about going crazy and anything else that is not in the realm of washing cleaning counting checking.

Disheartening as it is, remember you're right, he's wrong and push for a CBT therapist who knows the pure O forms of OCD. I'm in the same boat. Somebody I thought who was promising (on CBT register) turned out not to be that promising when I spoke to them on the phone about the therapy they conduct for OCD. But onward upward and start looking for the next person. The right one has to be out there

[Guest PalaeontologyLover]

I totally get you, I've been passed from pillar to post through my teenage years with nobody giving me a diagnosis. There's so little understanding of what ocd actually is, I didn't even understand it myself until I read about pure O (which is what I suffer with). Don't lose hope though, what you are receiving is good for ocd so don't let it throw you off recovery.

I started seeing CAMHS when I was 13 with nothing helping from them at all. It took a suicide attempt a couple months ago at 19 to lead to a diagnosis and proper treatment.

[PolarBear]

Even if your psychiatrist had not heard of your particular theme he should have been able to wriggle it down to the core basics. What's the obsession? What's the compulsion? If you've got both of those and the obsession causes distress it's probably OCD.

[imhotep79]

As others have said, Ocd is still a poorly understood disorder by some psychiatrists. Some of them still associate it to exclusively to washing/checking/counting when in reality thought content can be about anything, even bizarre thoughts like you have (I had your same schizophrenia fear and still have it to some degree).

I was lucky because all the 5 psychiatrists I've seen have promptly diagnosed me with Ocd (and one with GAD), but I know for a fact that many people's Ocd is still getting misdiagnosed as bipolar/schizophrenia/personality disorders etc.

[Guest jayjay89]

Unfortunately the field of psychiatry has the same problems as any other profession - you get good ones and bad ones.

Wheni was 14 I was diagnosed as BDD and anorexic by a psychiatrist - when my problem was : only wanting to eat white food from packets. I had no concern over my body image at all. And I had heaps of compulsions lol.

[Guest Orwell1984]

Personally, I think some psychiatrists are lazy and lack in curiosity and creativity that prevents them from thinking outside the box or putting effort into resolving a problem. They just chase a pay packet. Unfortunately, this has been my experience and I can deduce this by the lack of empathy some psychs have shown me over the course of my lifetime. It will be wonderful when there comes a time that there are more helpful psychiatrists than those who just view it as a job rather than a vocation.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Orwell1984

[Guest eden1616]

yes it has taken my whole life to be diagnosed with OCD mostly i think because i havent been able to explain it to anyone properly i was only diagnosed this year and i am 17 now but it has been a problem all my life at first they thought i was autistic, then they thought i was psychotic (i was hearing things and seeing things) and then finally ocd. if you arent happy with them you could try seeing someone else if that is possible.

[battlethrough]

Yes,ive practicaly had to spell it out to them and tell them the treatment I know I need,finaly getting through to them