[X] My Assistant

[ObiWanKenobi]

What better way for me to get involved with the forums than with some good ole-fashioned debate?

I come to you truly curious. Anecdotes are welcome, but I'd really like to see your opinion on the subject. It's some pretty good food for thought, at least. Now, we all know what mental illness is. Everyone these days has one, it seems. "So-and-so has ADHD, he needs to take his pills!" or "Oh, I always get depressed in the wintertime." I'd like to know what you think along [mainly] two lines of thought. Feel free to introduce more, of course, I just felt like it would be a good starting place.

Over a year ago, I was hospitalized. I was kept there for eight days, and came out with a brand new diagnosis to add to my ever-growing bundle: According to this particular hospital, I had borderline personality disorder. My psychiatrist had previously decided I had bipolar II, whereas my very first diagnosis two years before had been simply depression. Since then, another therapist has added that she believes I also have ADD. I'm starting to juggle an awful lot of opinions and diagnoses as to just what my brain is doing to me.

On the one hand, I can see how each and every one of those diagnoses could make sense. It's a pick-and-choose your symptoms sort of thing. I've read that medical students do this all the time-- when they're reading about all these illnesses, they think they're coming down with them and start freaking out at the slightest sneeze. In my case, it began with, "Aha! I see I'm depressed! I connect the dots and see that it makes sense!" Later, when my doctors crossed out depression and replaced it with bipolar II, guess what I thought? "Aha! I see I'm bipolar! I connect the dots and see that it makes sense!" When I was told I had BPD and ADD... well, I'm sure you can think of what I was thinking. Then I took a step back, looked at all the initials, and something felt off. Was it possible for one person to be all of these? Was there a label for every single thing I did and thought?

Maybe the hospital had only wanted to fill the space in on my diagnosis form, or maybe it was a rushed diagnosis. They only knew me for 8 days, and they weren't exactly the most flattering. Then again, maybe I truly do have BPD and I'm just overanalyzing. These days, I identify simply as bipolar II, which makes the most sense to me. And now whenever I look at people, and they list off their different medications, I wonder... do they truly need it? Or is our society just more comfortable with putting a label to things they don't understand?

What do you think, GTS+?