Title, basically. I know I have issues, but I couldn’t say if it’s depression, ADD, or just general problems. Is the only reason to have a diagnosis so you know what to work on, or are there other benefits such as easier access to therapy?
My question is meant specifically for Canada, but feel free to chip in from other countries. :)
My opinion is yes, absolutely. I say this as a Canadian who is legally permanently disabled because of a head injury and resultant mental health issues. I also have a friend who was recently scared about seeing a psychiatrist, but went and got diagnosed with a condition. (I don’t want to go into details for the sake of their privacy). We both have had our lives improved by engaging with mental health professionals.
As I see it, getting diagnosed doesn’t change the way you feel - what I mean is, you aren’t going to make things worse. It’s also not guaranteed to help, but here are some potential benefits:
- The big one is understanding yourself and the situation you are in. Once you have an official diagnosis, you can learn about your situation and how to accept it and work with it.
- You may gain access to additional help. From my experience as a Canadian patient, I am always ultimately in control of which recommended treatments I’m willing to try. You don’t HAVE to follow through on any of the doctor’s recommendations, but they can potentially be available as options. You can have conversations about expected benefits vs. side effects and decide what’s right for you. So you don’t lose anything and you can always say no.
- If you start seeing a health professional regularly, it can really help provide an outside perspective. It’s all too easy to get lost inside your own head, disregard progress, ignore problems, or fall prey to self-destructive thoughts. Having that 2nd person to help you keep track of how you’re doing and bounce ideas/problems off of can be invaluable.
- Most people (by a good margin, like 65-85% depending on the study) say that therapy meaningfully helped them. That’s not a promise of a “cure”, but even just being acknowledged and learning healthy habits/strategies can improve quality of life.
Ultimately, like I said, it’s your decision. Don’t feel bad if you want to take more time to think about it, but also be aware that for many people booking that initial appointment is easily one of the hardest steps.
Thank you for the in-depth and thoughtful response! This is more than I expected. :)
You’re welcome! This was one of those rare questions that fits really well with life experience. Best of luck on your health journey no matter what you choose. If it helps, one of the best things I learned was to think about how I would feel about a best friend in my position, figuring out what advice I’d give them, and trying to apply that to myself. Framing it like that really helped me figure out how to treat myself more kindly than I would have otherwise.
I went for a diagnosis, partially to support a claim of need for a special work environment as the rest of my team entered a bright, hot, loud hell-hole I knew would be the end of me. I have a history that could fit a profile of someone lightly affected by ADHD.
I got placed with a shrink over zoom, because #covid. Only rarely did she look up, but she was very sure I was affected. And the next 3 months were a roller-coaster.
You see, no matter what I said - side effects, worries about meds, ‘flattening’ - the answer was “more meds”. I could announce I was actively on fire, and her response would be to increase the dosage.
By the end she was convinced I was ‘profoundly’ ADHD; and me living with it for decades. More meds was the answer. More, more more.
I left my job anyway, and with that my extended medical also stopped. The monthly charge for medications was hundreds, the ‘flattening’ was becoming an impactful condition, and the distant nature of the person prescribing more meds without glancing at me became another issue. I began to feel that my entire involvement in this process of diagnosis and treatment was to validate someone’s profession and self-worth.
So I tapered off. I’ll get back into the process again, but not with this doc.
If you do start the diagnosis process, I hope you don’t get into a state where you doubt the professionals apparently working for your benefit. Trust is an important thing, and it’s frail.
I had a similar experience in some ways. I’ve seen many health professionals over the years, some counsellors, some therapists, some psychiatrists. It is very hard to find a good one that helps. It really depends on how good your mental health professional is, whether the diagnoses is going to be useful or not.
I have a couple stories about the doctors I’ve seen when I was in my 20s.
One was a psychiatrist. I would see her in person and like you she would barely look at me. She would spend 5 to 15 minutes with me. I told her about my very serious trauma and she didn’t say anything and didn’t try to discuss it. Completely uninterested, didn’t care at all. Just gave me drugs. She even prescribed me a stimulant meant for ADD. She didn’t say why or what it was for. I was too scared to ask her so I looked it up on the internet and found out it was for ADD symptoms, so I assumed I had ADD. Then about 8 months later, when the side effects were getting worrisome, I finally asked her about it. She said she thought I was a bit fat so she put me on it to make me lose weight. I never asked for help with that, and I was only 20lbs over weight at the time. We had never discussed my weight or anything, it was unhelpful and not why I went to see her. That medication would actually induce mania in me and I’d become impulsive and make really bad decisions while on it.
My next psychiatrist was worse. I was on a merry go round of meds all the time, changing nearly every month or two. It screws with your functioning getting use to one med, and then having to go off it. Withdrawals suck. And I was on multiple meds at one time so it was even worse. I was taking 8 different mental health meds at one point. I’d get side effects from one, then I’d get prescribed something to “help” with the side effects of that one, then get more side effects from this newest addition of drug, and again put on something to combat the side effects of that one. Or I’d mention something small that happened to me during the week, or a tiny thought that she squeezed out of me by her questioning and suddenly I’m on another drug with a brand new diagnosis. I got diagnosed and medicated for a tonne of different issues. I have no idea which ones are accurate. I don’t trust psychiatrists now.
When I would tell her I want OFF a medication, she would get insulted, as though it was a personal offense to her, and would interrogate me because I dared to question her. I’d have to prove it to her that I needed off them. Even though it was my body and if I wanted off them for absolutely any reason, even “I don’t like the way its making me feel”, I had a right to do so.
She also asked leading questions, and if I didn’t answer the way she wanted she would get irritated. So I started changing my answers to please her and her ego. I should have ended my sessions earlier than I did but I trusted her because she was a doctor, and because of my past I used to be a push over, especially with authority figures.
Her sessions could last 3 to 4 hours. It was mostly her talking at me about GMOs or television shows or whatever crap that had nothing to do with my issues, or doing office work like faxing prescriptions, or writing crap down after our appointment, or making phone calls. But she wouldn’t let me leave until she had done all that for some reason.
She was constantly late because she’d do the same with her other patients. I remember one time the patient after me knocked on the door and was justifiably annoyed. He said “it’s been 2 hours since my appointment was supposed to start”. She told him his current patient (me) was in total crisis breakdown and she needed to handle it. That was a lie. I was fine, I wasn’t crying or anything, I was normal. She was acting like I was actively suicidal or something and I wasn’t at all. Before the guy knocked on the door she was talking about where she bought her scarf. She was using me as an excuse for her poor time management. It was humiliating walking out into the waiting room after that in front of the patients out there knowing they heard her say that.
She would also gaslight me. She’d claim I never mentioned something before, when I know with 100% certainty I had. She would rifle through her notes and say “Nope it’s not here, you never said that.” As though it was final. Just because she never bothered to write it down didn’t mean I never brought it up. Luckily one of the times she claimed that, my partner was with me during those sessions and backed me up because he had heard me say it.
And these two long winded stories are only 2 of the people I saw. There’s more that were bad too. There was 1 that I wish I could have kept seeing because she was actually helping but we had to move.
TLDR I think if someone is just starting out trying to seek a diagnosis, I would not begin with a psychiatrist. They will dole out meds like candy. Go to a therapist or a counselor first and get an idea of what it could be before stuffing pills into yourself. Pills can help but it needs to be the right ones. Also if your mental health professional isn’t helping, end the sessions sooner rather than later. You should know by session 1 to 3 if they are going to be able to help you.
A professional, or team of, can pin point what is up. knowing the underlying issue can help find you treatments or medicine specific to your needs. Really though it depends on how well you cope with life/work/friends, because if you get by and it ia not hindering your enjoyment of life, then treatment meds may not be a priority. i have known a few people where they got adhd meds and found it life changing, and some with depression meds got them out of a deep funk.
Knowing what exactly is going is a big thing. I thought I had some form of ADD but it turns out I was just depressed and the ADD symptoms were just a side effect of it. Being diagnosed and on the correct medication was a game changer.
Fellow Canadian here and I wouldn’t have survived university without my ADHD diagnosis. It unlocks all sorts of special accommodations and services that the school will provide which can help a lot of you are bad at taking tests. Not too mention medication.
As for accessing therapy, it can be helpful to tell a therapist that you are diagnosed with something so that they can tailor the work they do with you.
Lastly, my ASD diagnosis was literally life-changing. I only got it a couple years ago and it helped me go from socially awkward late-20s virgin to a confident guy with a girlfriend. Because as you said it makes you much more aware of what your weaknesses are if you can get that external validation from a professional.
