Unsure

[AbbyKat98]

So, my psychiatrist hasn't quite diagnosed me with bipolar yet, but he's pretty sure that I have it. I have the common, "I'm happy for about a week and then I'm a complete ***** the next," at least that's how my sister puts it. I also believe I experience mania or manic episodes (if I'm right), because last week I was really happy with life and really happy with myself. Had no feelings of wanting or "needing to self harm, but then a couple day later I felt the need to. I got really upset and cried myself to sleep. The next day, I woke up perfectly fine. Right now, I'm diagnosed with a mood disorder, not a specific one, and I take Depacote for it. Can someone please help me figure myself out? I'm really confused. Information about me: I'm 15 (16 in October), 5' 9 1/2", and weigh 175. Thanks.

[persephonedemeter]

sorry. I meant tha he didn't announce to me the  ipolar disorder diagnosis until a year later from the first time I saw him.

[persephonedemeter]

I had to smile and chuckle to myself about the mood tracker. In the first year I was seeing my present longtime psychiatrist (for nearly 2 decades now), he requested and gave me mood tracker forms and logs to fill out...even got up to walk to his file cabinet to get them. I was extremely depressed at the time, but my mood would vacillate during different times of the day.

I turned the mood log over to him after filling out about a week's worth, and he just glanced at it and tossed it aside, and just asked me unrelated questions. I was too depressed to be stunned and question him about it, but I remember it did cross my mind that I was puzzled that he made a big deal that it would help but didn't bother at look at it for more than half a second. He nor I mentioned mood trackers again. I was rapid cycling every day at the time. He did announce to me the official bipolar disorder diagnosis for about a year, and during the time inbetween, never even uttered the word, bipolar, to me. At the time, I was under the diagnosis, major depression with psychotic features, and it pretty much disabled me from paticipating in life. I really wasn't able to pick up or aware that he was considering bipolar disorder as a diagnosis. When my therapist notified him and told him she witnessed me changing moods dramatically  at the drop of a hat from depression to mania then back to depression, that was when he said that he thought I had bipolar disorder. He is generally careful about his way of making a diagnosis. The depression diagnosis was one made by the psychiatrist I stopped seeing about a year before, and as it turned out, I later learned they went through residency together and were friends.

Practically, I think it is a good idea to keep the mood tracker, but I would add to keep a log or journal of your activities, significant thoughts that color your mood, and even note what you ate or drank. I found that when I had any sweets without having any "real" food that that would cause my mood to shoft dramatically. Even not eating for half a day. I also found when I start out exercising too hard and too long would get my thoughts to switch gears rapidly and widely. It will help you to understand your triggers in the long run and help you to manage them. It may also help you to understand the compulsion to self harm and help you manage that with some work.

I suspect that my doctor did not tell me that he was entertaining the bipolar disorder diagnosis to keep the diagnosis "clean." Sometimes, people "fit" what they are going through to get the diagnosis to work, because having a working diagnosis or any kind of diagnosis is so much better than not having any. Any answer is better than none. In the meantime, a mood disorder diagnosis sounds reasonable, because there are a lot of different kinds of mood disorder. It took a little more than a year by my doctor to arrive at the bipolar disorder diagnosis, and within the years that followed, it got fine tuned even more with a couple of other disorders tagged on to it. Even diagnoses can be a work in process. Medicine is a work in process

[AbbyKat98]

Thanks :)

[ILADVOCATE]

    Some of what you are describing sounds like rapid cycling where
in a short time frame a person can go from manic to depressed.
Other aspects of what you are describing sound like a mixed state
where a person can experience aspects of mania and depression
at the same time. One example is an agitated mixed state
where a person has the speeded up quality of mania
but the down quality of depression and can feel like they are angry
at the world.
  However only a psychiatrist could determine clinical specifics
but it would be worthwhile to  discuss this with your psychiatrist.
Also it would be helpful to keep a mood tracker
that is on this site. Then you could print out
the results for your psychiatrist which would be helpful
for them to see what could be happening and
how best to follow up.