What’s the point of getting a diagnosis?
A diagnosis is a tool for professionals to understand your mental health needs and what treatments (meds, therapy, support group) are most likely to help you. It also helps them get your treatment reimbursed by insurance companies or by the state.
A diagnosis is not a definition of who you are, but of the problems you are struggling with. Your diagnosis may change over time, but it helps you to get help. For a lot of us, getting a diagnosis is like a validation, a confirmation that what we have really is something, even though other people may have been shrugging it off.
For many of us, getting a diagnosis is a first step towards acceptance and recovery. As we get better, many of us move away from identifying as “a person with a diagnosis,” to “a person in recovery.”
“I really am grateful for this program for diagnosing me for what I am. I can actually figure out what’s wrong with me every time I have an episode or if I miss my meds or something like that.”
How do I get a diagnosis?
A psychiatrist or psychologist can make a diagnosis, based on an assessment. They’ll ask you questions about your history and will also use standard questions to help them do the assessment. Even if you’ve already told someone else your story, a new doctor is going to want to hear your whole story from the beginning.
Unlike other conditions and illnesses like diabetes or high cholesterol, there is no blood test to find out if you have a mental health, substance use, or addiction issue. The psychiatrist or psychologist you meet needs you to be open and honest, no matter how hard, so they can correctly diagnose you. That way they can effectively help you going forward.
How important is it to get the right diagnosis?
Different medications are used to treat different disorders—and some other treatments are used differently to treat different disorder, too—so if you have the wrong diagnosis, you may be getting the wrong medication!
Getting the right diagnosis is more like an art than a science. Sometimes the doctors don’t get it right. When they figure it out, then they’ll do a better job with your treatment—so let them know if it doesn’t feel like the diagnosis or the treatment are working for your problems!
Remember that there is no blood test for mental illness and addiction disorders–your treatment team depends on YOU to give them enough information to make the correct diagnosis.
“I think my diagnosis right now is accurate. But it took me like 3 years though before I got an accurate diagnosis.”
“If I had been more revealing with my doctors, my diagnosis wouldn’t have changed so much and I would’ve gotten the right diagnosis and the right treatment sooner.”
Is it possible to have more than one issue at a time? What are “co-occurring disorders”?
Not only is it possible, it’s quite common to have several diagnoses. For example, if you have social anxiety, you may become isolated, and then that can contribute to depression. You may have more than one addiction. Often people who have an addiction turn out to have an undiagnosed mental health concern—which may be why they were self-medicating in the first place.
Having both a mental health disorder, like depression or anxiety, along with a substance use disorder, is so common there’s actually a name for it: “co-occurring disorder (COD)” (also known as Dual Diagnosis). If that describes you, make sure you find a therapist or provider agency that works to help you with both.