Magda is hardly alone in her experience of mental health misdiagnosis. A 2012 study by Bipolar UK, the Royal College of Physicians, and Bipolar Scotland found that “people with bipolar disorder wait for an average of 13.2 years before they are diagnosed, and often spend years receiving treatment for other conditions.”
Of 706 people surveyed, only 15% received a prompt diagnosis, while 85% experienced diagnostic delay. “Most of those were wrongly told they had depression,”
writes Denis Campbell for The Guardian. “
Among the 85% whose diagnosis was delayed, 71% said that their symptoms had become worse as a result of receiving inappropriate treatment, such as antidepressants or sleeping pills.” As Suzanne Hudson, chief executive of Bipolar UK, says, “A delay of this length has a significant impact for individuals and families, with sometimes devastating consequences, as bipolar has the highest rate of suicide of any psychiatric illness.”
Of course,
people with bipolar disorder are not the only ones vulnerable to misdiagnosis. “Misdiagnosis can happen with any mental health disorder,”
says Gabrielle Moss, a writer for Bustle. “[For example], a 2009 meta-analysis of 50,000 patients published in the Lancet found that general practitioners
only correctly identified depression in patients in 47.3% of cases.” Meanwhile,
a 2008 study by researchers at the Brown University School of Medicine
found that 57% of adults diagnosed with bipolar disorder did not meet diagnostic criteria upon more comprehensive diagnostic review. Aside from bipolar disorder and depression, some
of the most frequently misdiagnosed mental health disorders include borderline personality disorder, ADHD, PTSD, and anxiety.