Some Conditions Misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder, like PTSD

I'm shaking my head in amazement right now. How many times have I written that too often doctors get it wrong because PTSD can look like a lot of other things it isn't? How many times have they gotten it wrong because it was easy to find what they were looking for instead of really listening to the patient they just met and what else was going on in their life to diagnose them right?

PTSD comes after trauma and begins from that. There is no other way to have PTSD. It is an emotional wound setting off all kinds of other changes in the way people think, live, feel and deal with life but the long, long list of symptoms can look like a lot of other mental illnesses.

Usually when I do a post about this, I get emails coming in telling me I'm an idiot, reminding me that I'm not a doctor (as if I needed to be reminded of that) and they knew more than I did. The problem is, they never stopped to figure out where I was getting all my facts from during all these years. I read the real experts on PTSD and learned from the PTSD veterans themselves, plus living with my own husband. So thank you very much Brown University for this vindication!

Some Conditions Misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder
By Amy Norton
August 13, 2009

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A study published last year suggested that bipolar disorder may be over diagnosed in people seeking mental health care. Now new findings shed light on which disorders many of these patients actually have.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, involves dramatic swings in mood -- ranging from debilitating depression to euphoric recklessness.

In the original 2008 study, researchers at Brown University School of Medicine found that of 145 adults who said they had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, 82 (57 percent) turned out not to have the condition when given a comprehensive diagnostic interview.

In this latest study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, the researchers used similar standardized interviews to find out which disorders those 82 patients might have.

Overall, they found, nearly half had major depression, while borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized anxiety and social phobia were each diagnosed in roughly one-quarter to one-third.

In addition, he told Reuters Health in an email, over diagnosis means some patients are likely not getting the appropriate care for the problems they do have.

Bipolar disorder shares certain characteristics with some other psychiatric conditions. Borderline personality disorder, for instance, is marked by unstable mood, impulsive behavior and problems maintaining relationships with other people.

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http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=8322028

1 man’s odyssey from campus to combat in Afghanistan

1 man’s odyssey from campus to combat
Michael Bhatia loved Afghanistan, and he lost his life there — the first social scientist to die in a controversial Pentagon experiment that teams soldiers and scholars. This story is the first of two parts.
By Adam Geller - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Mar 14, 2009 9:44:30 EDT

MEDWAY, Mass. — On the overcast New England morning Michael Bhatia came home, nearly 400 of his colleagues, family and friends turned out to meet him.

Seven months had passed since Bhatia, a 31-year-old scholar in international relations from Brown University, hefted his pack across the tarmac at Fort Benning, Ga., ready to begin his sixth journey to Afghanistan.

Every trip had come with risks, but this one was the toughest to explain. No one questioned Bhatia’s commitment to Afghanistan, but many disagreed sharply with the way he’d chosen to pursue it.

“I am already preparing for both the real and ethical minefields,” he e-mailed friends, hours before boarding.

Bhatia was joining the Human Terrain System, a Pentagon experiment to re-engineer the battle against Afghan and Iraqi insurgents by teaming soldiers and scholars. Human Terrain set off a war of its own in the academic world: Critics, particularly anthropologists, argued that Human Terrain researchers could not serve two masters — that they risked betraying the people they studied by feeding information to the military.

Bhatia disagreed. But the only way to know, he told friends, was to see for himself.

Even skeptical colleagues looked forward to the conclusion of his journey: If anybody could thread the ethical minefield, it was Mike.
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Iraq veteran relays the trauma, tragedy of war

Iraq veteran relays the trauma, tragedy of war
Christopher Baker
Issue date: 10/7/08 Section: Campus News
The Brown Daily Herald - Providence,RI,USA

Tuesday night, Iraq War veteran Kristofer Goldsmith tried to describe what a dead human body smells like to a wide-eyed audience of more than 50 students, professors and community members.

"I can tell you that it doesn't smell like a raccoon that got run over a week ago. It doesn't smell like road kill. There is a very, very distinct smell to a dead human."

He said he experiences this smell every time he sees gore in a movie like "Saw."

"The smell isn't just your nose. You can taste it. You can taste the iron of the blood floating in the air," he said.

Goldsmith, 23, came to Brown as a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, a group that advocates for veterans' rights and the end of U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq, to speak about his traumatic experience serving in the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry between 2005 and 2007. The talk was sponsored by anti-war group Operation Iraqi Freedom, Students for a Democratic Society, Brown Democrats, Rhode Island Mobilization Committee, Active Minds and Brown American Civil Liberties Union. It took place in MacMillan 115.

Goldsmith, a Long Island native, joined the army when he was 18 in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. He was first deployed to Iraq in January 2005. By the time he returned to the United States in December 2006, he had developed post-traumatic stress disorder and severe alcoholism.

"I didn't feel human anymore," Goldsmith said.

His contract, which was set to expire in May 2007, was extended indefinitely as part of the troop surge announced by President Bush in January 2007. On Memorial Day of that year, the day his infantry was set to redeploy to Iraq, he attempted suicide.
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