The nurse practitioner I'm seeing about my ADHD diagnosed me with bipolar disorder
She literally could not have surprised me more if she tried
This makes no sense to me but it's scaring me a lot :(
I don't really remember having manic episodes? Depressive maybe but it's usually after something bad happens to me and not really consistently....
I told her I put off making this appointment cuz I've been feeling really bad recently, then she just asked me a few questions like if people say I talk too much sometimes or if I do things impulsively and prescribed me an antipsychotic (aripiprazole) wtf
I asked some family and they haven't noticed anything like this... idk :(. Has this happened to anyone else? Am I just in denial? I'm afraid to take this drug she gave cuz I really don't need to be even more tired all the time... or tardive dyskinesia or something (unlikely, worst case)
Yeah, it's definitely a balancing act and it needs to be weighed against other factors but often it's a compromise between quality of life and mitigating other risk factors for health outcomes (especially life expectancy) that comes with bipolar vs the potential consequences being on lithium long term.
But with all of those other considerations aside it's still the gold standard for bipolar treatment, even if it's imperfect. (Shit, it's not like going down the antipsychotic and polypharmacy routes don't also bring their own complications and potential negative impacts from long-term use, and this is absolutely where I defer to psychiatrists as experts because there's a whole lot of considerations that need to be weighed against eachother that I cannot do from behind a screen and I neither want to take on that responsibility nor do I get paid enough to do that.)