Mental health questionnaires?

[Gs172003]

@Zoogal - right. The thing is, are your symptoms bad based on your normal? Are they better than last month? Or are things going downhill? That’s where tracking comes in handy.

I’ve been using that app for a while now. I now completely ignore whether the app thinks my symptoms are mild or bad - what matters is the line that you get over time. Are you tracking up? Down? Or are you stable? That can be really helpful to know - based on the way you personally answer those same set of questions each month, how well are you.

Thanks I will keep that in mind

 

[siniang]

Why do you have to screen so often?

Sorry, my wording may have been confusing. I don't >have< to do them >every< two weeks. But if appointments (either T or PsyDoc, since they're with the same department) are more than two weeks apart, they ask me two do new questionnaires. I think it's to track changes as @Sideways mentioned. It really only asks about feelings/thoughts/experiences within the last two weeks and you get to pick "never", "some days", "more than half of the days", "almost every day". It will be scored. It basically gives them an easy idea of what's been going on within the last two weeks and they can directly address items that stand out (for example, SI suddenly popping up when it was absent before? Flag). They're not really long, but I do think they give a good general idea.

What was interesting to me is that both (in addition with other things, of course) were also used for my initial assement despite only asking for the last 2 weeks and at least GAD having to have symptoms present for at least the last 6 months (though that became obvious during the interview - hence, questionnaire alone? Not helpful for diagnosing)

@berlinda I did a comprehensive personality inventory (hundreds of questions - like, take it home, bring it back with you next week) when my first pdoc wanted a second opinion. It demonstrated that I have traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I’ve needed reassurance that I’m not narcissistic on a number of occasions since doing that assessment. If I had’ve done it online for free? I wouldn’t have had the benefit of understanding that all it means is that I have all the internal symptoms of NPD (pathological self-loathing). If all I had were results saying “You have significant NPD traits? That would’ve pushed me over the edge for sure.

And that's why self-diagnosing is so dangerous. :hug:

 

[Teasel]

Fully in agreement that having a professional that knows what they are doing is invaluable.

Though I might add that being incorrectly diagnosed by psychiatrists (twice) was truly devastating for me too. I've the impression that a lot of us with c-PTSD are misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

 

[Gs172003]

Fully in agreement that having a professional that knows what they are doing is invaluable.

Though I might add that being incorrectly diagnosed by psychiatrists (twice) was truly devastating for me too. I've the impression that a lot of us with c-PTSD are misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

From what I have read and been told alot of psychiatrists believe c-ptsd is the basically a renaming of borderline personality disorder. I don't know why or how true that is. Makes sense why people would be misdiagnosed that way.