Dx of Bipolar

Nurses Recovery

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Fudge y'all. My mother has been in a panic about my diagnosis of bipolar (from age 14) coming up in this evaluation I'm gonna be facing. I sent the board a front cover of a medical record (which was the voluntary detox just past 5 yrs ago, because it was the only medical tx I had ever received and this was when I was naively trying to be transparent with the board). In the actual full record (which I guess they will be obtaining) it says there is a "history" of bipolar. Now, today...as a grown woman...a grown, sober* woman...i don't believe that I am bipolar. I glanced over the symptoms and no, none apply (and have not for many years). My mom's fear is that they are going to force me into therapy or meds. Again...I'll say that would be just about criminal. In all seriousness though...how might this affect the direction of this nightmare I'm fixing to be living? Thanks in advance.

Specializes in OR.
Technically the Board doesn't mandate it; the monitoring program does. So it's not a legal mandate, per se, but if I want to stay in compliance with my "voluntary" program, I have to take naltrexone.

Is this just in exchange for the waiver of a key restriction or indefinitely?

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Is this just in exchange for the waiver of a key restriction or indefinitely?

In exchange for having the key restriction dropped at the 6 month mark since I began to practice again as a nurse...with the expectation that I stay on the med as long as I am dispensing narcotics in the program .

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Specializes in OR.

Ugh! I can see why your psych doc would be pissed. These programs claim to not prescribe but they sure do bully our docs into what they can and cannot give us. Mine states in thier "manual" something to the effect of "does not encourage the long term use of mood or mind altering substances for the treatment of psychiatric conditions." That's rich. If one had a mood disorder, does not one need a mood stabilizer (among other things) for treatment. I suspect that refers to benzos, which I would agree with but that sentence (like a lot in these things) is wide open to interpretation, in that (to me) it sounds like they are trying to tell my doc what he can and cannot prescribe for me. My doc laughs at this whole thing, as do I.

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Ugh! I can see why your psych doc would be pissed. These programs claim to not prescribe but they sure do bully our docs into what they can and cannot give us. Mine states in thier "manual" something to the effect of "does not encourage the long term use of mood or mind altering substances for the treatment of psychiatric conditions." That's rich. If one had a mood disorder, does not one need a mood stabilizer (among other things) for treatment. I suspect that refers to benzos, which I would agree with but that sentence (like a lot in these things) is wide open to interpretation, in that (to me) it sounds like they are trying to tell my doc what he can and cannot prescribe for me. My doc laughs at this whole thing, as do I.

I honestly imagine if my doc prescribed things in a manner that the program disagreed with, or refused the naltrexone purely on the basis that he doesn't like naltrexone in general (he does not like naltrexone in general)...I do believe they would tell me that I need to see a new shrink if I wanted to stay compliant. I have no doubt that is something they would do. Or perhaps they would up my drug test frequency, or find a different requirement for me to have in order to "assure my complaince".

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Specializes in OR.

Very true. I have been in situations with them where I have been yelled at and talked over in phone conversations. My preferred method of contact is now either email (so that I have a record) or attorney (so that I don't spout off in frustration and say anything stupid).

I don't trust these people any further than I could kick them.....

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Keep in mind, it is wrong to diagnose "bipolar disorder" in an actively substance abusing patient.

But this happens fairly often, because some clinicians in mental health don't adhere to diagnostic rules.

Quite unlikely the OP has any such thing, if there have been no symptoms in all these years while sober

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Specializes in OR.
Keep in mind, it is wrong to diagnose "bipolar disorder" in an actively substance abusing patient.

But this happens fairly often, because some clinicians in mental health don't adhere to diagnostic rules.

Quite unlikely the OP has any such thing, if there have been no symptoms in all these years while sober

Very true. Also very difficult (and not good practice, I think) to diagnose bipolar in children, although it's done, because y'know meds fix everything //sarcasm//...I was not diagnosed until adulthood, but looking back it explains a lot of my behavior as a child.

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How is it they get a hold of hospital records? I mean aside from the detox I did....how is it that they get access to ALL medical records? Because that is opening a can of worms I'd imagine.

Also, when I reflect back to me as a tween I see a lot of depression not bipolar. And the depression was just me not coping with things going on in my life in a healthy way ("maladaptive coping"?). I had a verbally abusive grandmother, was picked on in school because my mother was gay and it was a small town, to say my mother was emotionally disconnected from her children back then would be an understatement and i believe she was going through her own crisis, and eventually ended up moving to a city where I was (and in ways continue to be) socially akward and had a hard time fitting in.

In hindsight I also always wondered about a medication I was on. It was depakote for childhood seizures. My mom has said that there were no issues until I was weened off the depakote and I agree with that. I wish I knew more about the brain because I understand it is used to treat bipolar as well, and always wondered if coming off it threw my brain into a mess on top of all the situational garbage that was going on.

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How is it they get a hold of hospital records? I mean aside from the detox I did....how is it that they get access to ALL medical records? Because that is opening a can of worms I'd imagine.

Also, when I reflect back to me as a tween I see a lot of depression not bipolar. And the depression was just me not coping with things going on in my life in a healthy way ("maladaptive coping"?). I had a verbally abusive grandmother, was picked on in school because my mother was gay and it was a small town, to say my mother was emotionally disconnected from her children back then would be an understatement and i believe she was going through her own crisis, and eventually ended up moving to a city where I was (and in ways continue to be) socially akward and had a hard time fitting in.

In hindsight I also always wondered about a medication I was on. It was depakote for childhood seizures. My mom has said that there were no issues until I was weened off the depakote and I agree with that. I wish I knew more about the brain because I understand it is used to treat bipolar as well, and always wondered if coming off it threw my brain into a mess on top of all the situational garbage that was going on.

In order to be in compliance with the monitoring program, I had to agree to sign releases of information (ROI) for anything they asked about. When they saw the depression diagnosis, they demanded a ROI for the doc who first diagnosed that...They read his whole chart and then they demanded even more ROI's for any referral he made or any mention he made in my chart of therapists or other doctors/treatments. You can see how quickly it snowballed from there. I mean, it was a massive stack of releases. So now I have additional mental health monitoring despite the fact that my issue was straight substance abuse in terms of the cause of my monitoring.

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Specializes in OR.

It is getting really scary what these people are demanding under the guise of "being in compliance." It's like "we're going to threaten you with your livelihood even more than we already are by forcing you to give up private (quite probably not germane to the situation) medical info just so we can dig through it and find more reasons to threaten your livelihood."

If they were able to inflict "mental health monitoring" on every nurse that had some kind of history of depression or therapy or childhood issue or whatnot....jeez almighty, that would be like 2/3 of the licensed nurses. Or more. This has crossed the line into pure harassment.

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It is getting really scary what these people are demanding under the guise of "being in compliance." It's like "we're going to threaten you with your livelihood even more than we already are by forcing you to give up private (quite probably not germane to the situation) medical info just so we can dig through it and find more reasons to threaten your livelihood."

If they were able to inflict "mental health monitoring" on every nurse that had some kind of history of depression or therapy or childhood issue or whatnot....jeez almighty, that would be like 2/3 of the licensed nurses. Or more. This has crossed the line into pure harassment.

Truth. They wouldn't have cared a snit about my depression otherwise, I'm sure. But since I was under their scrutiny already and my depression did play a part in my decision to use substances, they decided to unpack my entire can of worms.

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Specializes in Critical Care.
If they big boyed me into seeing a therapist, would that therapist hold the power to say I didn't need their services?

The problem is a conflict of interest. Keeping you in therapy keeps the money flowing. I wouldn't trust the system. I think it is more about a money making machine than truly helping people.

I've been a nurse for over 20 years and don't remember the board asking for medical info back then. I never had to have a drug test for a job either. I guess those were the good old days!

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