has anyone received multiple different diagnoses than the ones they now have?

yes!!!!!!! Apart from the mental health diagnosises, i had an accident and damaged my spinal chord. I was given 6 different diagnoses!!!!!!! one being conversion disorder, one being m.s, one specialist also said that i was a drug addick seeking drugs!!!

I have also been diagnosed with bipoler, depression, ptsd and manic depression.

I think that the reason for all the different diagnosises are because of me. When i saw a specialist they diagnosed me from what i told them and how i told my story. if i saw a specialist and i was in a good mood, then they didnt agree that i had depression, if i was in a really bad state i was diagnosed with bipoler. if i trusted the docter from the start i would give the whole story, thus giving me a different diagnosis, if i didnt like the docter i would hold some things back and get a different diagnosis again. I think that in order to get the right diagnosis you have to see the docter when your at your worst and you have to tell the whole story. also time plays a part, what was diagnosed as one thing 10 or even 5 years ago will be called something else now as the docters find out more about the human body.

it is confusing but it really depends on what you say to the docter and if theres a good repore between you and the docter. good luck, Violet

If you combine the symptoms of bipolar and PTSD, you get borderline personality disorder. Especially if the PTSD is from chronic situations like sexual abuse, battering, concentration camp, etc. I think borderline is not really a personality disorder in most people, I think it is often severe PTSD. There is so much overlap between these diagnoses, it's ridiculous. What I tell people on yahoo answers is, the doc or therapist has to put down a diagnosis on paper to get insurance reimbursement, the diagnoses were made up in the DSM as a research tool and were never meant to actually define a specific illness (they are clusters of symptoms) and it is a mistake for mental health professionals to think those artificial categories mean a lot. what the meds do is target symptoms. Are you depressed? Take an antidepressant or a mood stabilizer. Hearing voices/thought insertions, etc. take a neuroleptic. Etc. etc.

Docs put me down with depression first, even tho I TOLD them (LITERALLY GAVE THEM A GRAPH OVER TIME!) about the working 2 jobs and going to school full-time. Then I finally diagnosed myself, and whoa, the docs are like, you're right! But then pretend that they figured it out. Then later, I got a borderline diagnosis because I couldn't control my behavior, even tho I did not fit enuf criteria. Lo and behold, it was a bad reaction to ativan over many years, and when I stopped it almost all the poor behavior went away. So then I guess I wasn't borderline after all (even tho I never had feelings of emptiness, or need for others, or black and white thinking?)

Psychiatry will be soooooooo much better when they get lab tests.

I'm 27, and I've received 3 diagnoses since I was first treated at age 14 including atypical psychosis with severe depression, bipolar disorder, and schizo- affective bipolar disorder. I was taken off meds almost 2 years ago. So now my questions fluctuate between "which diagnosis was right?" , "was there ever much wrong in the first place?" , "what happened to my being menally ill?". I suppose I can't deny that something wasn't quite right with me. Anyway, I guess this isn't so much of an answer as a reaffirmation of your question and my current opinion of what happened with me. When I was 14, I could tell there was something abnormal about me, so I cried out for help by saying I was suicidal and by telling them I had every symptom that (in reality) I only thought or feared I had. I think they took this very seriosly in giving me my first diagnosis. As a few more years went by I got better at knowing how I truly felt and how to communicate this to them. I believe this affected my 2nd diagnosis. When I was 19 my condition got so bad that I became paranoid and dellusional. I think this was the first time they could see my illness so clearly for themselves. And so my diagnosis was changed again.

It is my humble (and uneducated) opinion that psychology is still an inexact science and that therapists are limited to making tentative diagnoses based on what they are told by their patients and on what behavior we exhibit while we are being observed by them. I also think that the categories that they use for diagnosing are updated often enough to cause us to be regrouped over the years as the science becomes more precise.

I started feeling anxious and depressed when I was in high school, but didn't get any help for it until after my first semester of college. At first I was diagnosed with Adjustment Disorder, since then it was changed to Generalized Anxiety Disorder, then Major Depression. My current psychiatrist believes that I may have a form of bipolar disorder and my therapist believes that I might have Anxiety Disorder NOS (Not Otherwise Specified - meaning my symptoms fall into a bunch of categories, but I don't have enough symptoms in any one category to give me a more specific diagnosis).

They seem to up date or "Politically correct" them.Like Bipolar was Manic Depression.