Ann Bracken

Mad in America recently published one of my poems that deals with mis-diagnosis and a careless rush to judgment. In “The Hopkins Doctor Diagnoses Me,” I tell the story of how I acquired a diagnosis of bipolar II and how that diagnosis resulted in an unnecessary hospitalization in a psychiatric ward.

Back in the 1990s, I had felt depressed for a couple of years and had seen a few doctors for treatment–which consisted of trying numerous psychiatric drugs without any relief. One of my doctors got so frustrated that he threw my file across his office and said, “I’m sending you to Hopkins. They deal with people like you all the time.” The doctor never revealed that antidepressants can often worsen a depression or even cause a state of chronic depression that is pretty much untreatable. (Giovanni Fava wrote about this in 1994, when I was experiencing depression)

Several months later, a doctor at Hopkins finally saw me for about an hour. I’m guessing he’d read my file and seen all of the drugs I’d taken, none of which were helping. He noted that twice before when I’d felt depressed, I’d gotten relief for my symptoms from an older drug called Elavil.

And because I reported that I “felt like a party girl” for a couple of days once the depression lifted, the Hopkins doctor diagnosed me as having bipolar II–a milder form of bipolar disorder. He refused to listen to me when I enumerated the symptoms I didn’t have–insomnia, overspending, and grandiose thoughts among others.

I tried to explain to the Hopkins doctor that I had a higher than average “happiness level” and frequently felt upbeat and energetic. But he put that information down to confirming his diagnosis rather than listening to the truth of my life.

He told me that sometimes antidepressants can “reveal” an underlying bipolar disorder, which sounded like a medication effect to me, not an actual illness. And he never told me that research had shown that some people who take antidepressants for depression alone can begin to experience cycles of depression and mania.

And the problem with his overly simplistic diagnosis is that every other doctor who read my records saw me as someone with bipolar II disorder and dismissed my concerns and explanations. Worst of all, they continued to prescribe me unneeded mood stabilizers.

Later, when I was hospitalized for mania–which was due to taking prednisone for three weeks–the doctors there also dismissed my explanation of having a reaction to prednisone because of my bipolar II diagnosis.

A needless hospitalization could have been avoided if the doctors had done two things: listened to me when I described my upbeat personality and taken into account the very common effect of mania due to prednisone. And the years of taking unnecessary and mind-body altering mood regulators could have been totally avoided.

I’m one of the lucky ones–I got off of antidepressants, mood regulators, anti-anxiety drugs and pain medication in the early 2000s and haven’t had any recurrences of depression. And I’m glad that my negative experience led me to reading and research that I can share with others.

Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker is a good place to begin if you want to know more about psychiatric drugs and their effectiveness. You may be as shocked and surprised as I was by what you find.