The problem is that being ' officially ' labelled can then make you view all your experiences through the lens of that diagnoses . So what would normally be you reacting with increased stress to a difficult life situation ( which is quite normal of course ) becomes ' the bi-polar disorder ' rearing its diagnosed head . Another major possible pitfall with being tagged with BPD ( or any psychiatric label ) is that so-called experts will also become biased in their perception of you . Any signs of individuality or personality may come to be seen as evidence of your bipolar illness . Self fulfilling prophecies are powerful if you believe yourself to be sick . But so are professional expectations : " He / She is sick therefore everything they say or do is a sign of that sickness ." Psychiatrists and doctors can and do get it wrong and the consequences can be really bad .
Being sane in insane places
The 1973 experiment
( 1 ) in which psychologically healthy volunteers had a real problem convincing psychiatrists they weren ' t psychotic and therefore getting released from hospitals proved difficult , showed just how shaky so called ' expert diagnoses ' can be . The psychiatrists believed those participating in the experiment were genuinely psychotic and once experts ' minds are made up they ' ll tend to see anything you say and do as ' evidence ' that you have what you ' ve been diagnosed with - even , sadly if the diagnosis wasn ' t correct . So if psychiatrists can ' t reliably tell who is psychotic and who isn ' t , should we be so unquestionably trustful of their diagnoses - especially when we consider
the powerful effects of labelling . Maybe you genuinely do have bipolar disorder . But if you or someone you know has been given this tag I want you to read on and consider the possibility that you don ' t . It staggered me to discover the extent to which the diagnoses of BPD has increased since the 1990s . Of course the argument is that it is just being more ' recognised .' But is this true ?
Poles Apart
Someone is said to be suffering from bipolar disorder if they regularly swing between deep depression and hypo-manic states . These ' high ' states can include psychotic delusions , hearing voices , seeing things that are not there , ' disordered thinking ' wild spending of money , following unrealistic goals , believing oneself to be special or on a ' special mission '. One manic man I knew believed himself to be the King of England when he was ' up .' In my experience of people suffering from this kind of bipolarity the person who is ' high ' is often unrecognizable from the person who is ' low '. On the way