i think mental illness and drug abuse really do go hand in hand and im not at all surprised to see the results of this poll and to assume that most of these individuals hav bn diagnosed professionally
saying that i suspect there is self-diagnosis going in in the odd person to some degree
which worries me - u shud never ever label urself with a mental illness until u know for sure u hav one!
I disagree, but just slightly. If you never accept you have some form of mental illness you will never seek help, probably it will just manifest to a point where you are either dead or leading a highly secluded life, but if you never say, "Something is wrong here," you would never seek any form of help, would you? Obviously you can't get into specifics, but I dunno, I feel I self-diagnosed myself and my psychiatrist I now have seems pretty on the same line as myself, and its not like I went in and said, "I think I have SAD, OCD and Depression." I just stated how I feel and essentially I got this, except for it turns out there is PTSD which although I completely realized, I failed to self-diagnose, but when he told me you know, I think you are suffering from post traumatic stress my jaw dropped and it made so much sense to me, so anyways, as now properly diagnosed, but still early diagnosis, no meds yet, just a lot of conversing:
Social Anxiety Disorder, PTSD, OCD, Depression (we haven't gotten into this too much yet, I actually feel it is due to using Cannabis too much and if I quit it may clear up just fine, I've always been like, not very interested in anything, I feel its more a part of my personality than true depression, I don't really know if there is anyway to overcome it, meds may help who knows, the anxieties are definitely somewhat new and not a true part of me, mostly stemming from the PTSD).
EDIT
Anyone else feel the whole system is a bit slow? Like we've had two appts in the past month both 60 minutes long, and he talked for more of it than me, lol, and I don't have another appt until a month from now. Maybe it is because I'm not self destructive, or suicidal, or a danger to others but I dunno, it feels really slow especially considering these feelings aren't even new, been dealing for well over a year now and only recently got the opportunity to actually talk to a psychiatrist about it. Oh and I took one of those silly disagree, neutral, agree tests, lol, maybe this will lead to some more action, I dunno but in my opinion there is no way he will properly know what is wrong with me from the test, most of the time I didn't even feel much of it related, like, "It is important that I feel loved by others." I dunno...I really can't say I have any opinion on this, outside of family I've never felt love for or from another person so I have noooo idea.