Hi - I'm here to complain about a recent encounter I had with a sleep physician! I'd seen her two years ago, purely to fill out paperwork for my health insurance company, and she seemed fine, smiley enough. I then saw her recently, with a sleep complaint, which has nothing to do with my mental health, which is stable. When I saw the sleep physician, she said she wanted to communicate with my psychiatrist. I told her she could tell me what she wanted to know, and I'd ask him to write a letter with that information. I could understand that she wanted confirmation from him that my mental health was stable (as if it wasn't, that could have explained my symptoms) and while I might be peeved that she didn't believe me, that she didn't believe my report that I was well and stable, I could accept that, yep, doctors typically don't believe patients. (My psychiatrist's opinion that I'm stable is based on my reports to him that I'm stable, so it's just a case of him reporting what I'm saying, rather than her taking it directly from me... )
However, the sleep physician also said she wanted to know my diagnosis, and differential diagnosis. Huh? What the **** has the DIFFERENTIAL diagnosis got to do with anything? I told her that the diagnosis was not up for grabs, it definitively was bipolar affective disorder, but she repeated that she wanted to know the differential diagnosis. There is absolutely no way that knowing the differential diagnosis is going to change the way she manages my sleep disorder. (FYI it is schizoaffective disorder, but I have never had mood-in-congruent psychotic symptoms, so I categorically do not have schizoaffective disorder.) This is not her laneway; she does not and never will have anything to do with the management of my psych illness.
This does seem like stigma against bipolar. The only time the differential diagnosis might be relevant is where the original diagnosis is doubtful, and there is absolutely no doubt in my diagnosis. It looks 100% like she doubts the original diagnosis, that's the only reason why the alternatives might be relevant. Illnesses that I DON'T have (the differential diagnosis) have absolutely no relevance to my care. And this is totally not her laneway.
Perhaps refusing to tell her my weight (all she needed to know was it was stable) also contributed to her stigmatising, making it easy to label me a difficult psych patient.
