The other day I was having a conversation with a longtime friend. She happened to mention that a friend of hers was having problems with her son. Apparently he had been committed for observation after admitting he thought about killing himself. The circumstances surrounding this situation sounded more like post graduate, young person angst than clinical depression.... but that certainly is not for anyone but a professional to judge.
Well about 3 minutes into the conversation she proceeded to say that he was diagnosed with bipolar and that he's just a lazy kid and his mother simply thinks he's lazy and shouldn't be taking the prescribed medication, blah, blah, blah. Well, the kicker is that she explained to me that "we all know that bipolar is just schizophrenia anyway...." . Oh my goodness, how much she doesn't know and how certain she is of her knowledge. This type of ignorance happens all the time with many things. My sadness is that without knowing anything she proceeds to counter any possible diagnosis made and encourages her friend to stop the medication!
The first rule of thumb for all of us non certified professionals in the medical field is to stop diagnosing when you/we don't have the experience to make this type of call. Despite the surrounding circumstances, do we really want to put a person in danger because we "think" he's simply lazy? No, I don't think so. What I take away from this experience is that misconceptions and ignorance abound and we must be sure this doesn't keep us from getting the professional advice for the person who suffers from a mental disorder.
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