Kailyn Lowry Finds Out She Was Misdiagnosed With Bipolar Disorder
Nov. 25 2015, Published 3:31 p.m. ET
Kailyn Lowry had to deal with a teen pregnancy and has been trying to resolve the problems in her marriage, but now the Teen Mom 2 star is dealing with a major medical crisis.
During a recent episode of The Doctors, Lowry found out that her bipolar disorder was diagnosed incorrectly.
"A few years ago, my mom was diagnosed bipolar and my older son's father and I split up," Lowry shared. "My mom's an alcoholic, so I'm a new single parent at 17 years old — and I think I was going through so much, so I wanted to go get treatment for mood swings, anxiety, depression."
That's when a doctor told her she was bipolar.
"I did a psychiatric evaluation, and then he said I think that you are bipolar," she recalled.
After getting diagnosed, Lowry began using mood stabilizers, but they didn't seem to help her. So she stopped going to therapy and stopped taking the pills.
And then her life took a turn for the better: she met her husband, stopped communicating with her mother, and started going to school.
"I think my life just really settled down and started to fall into place," she said. "So that's when I started questioning the diagnosis."
Lowry then sat down with Dr. Shahla Modir, who reanalyzed her past, family history and symptoms and provided a new understanding of Lowry's medical condition.
"She had been in a depressive episode after she had her first son for five months that she didn't get treatment for," Dr. Modir said. "She was having some mood swings and irritable, but she didn't actually meet the technical criteria for having a hypomanic episode."
"So to have a diagnosis of Bipolar 2, you have to have had one depressive episode and then you need to have symptoms like an inflated grandiose mood, increased activity levels, increased energy, plus three or more symptoms from the main bipolar criteria from at least four days," Dr. Modir continued. "In our case, Kail didn't meet that criteria."
Lowry had mood changes and was irritable, but was lacking signs of the other symptoms.
So Dr. Modir believed that Lowry's previous doctor disgnosed her as bipolar 2 based on family history and her depression, but didn't consider the whole gamut.
"The doctor was just afraid that she might develop a full hypomanic episode," Dr. Modir explained. "But technically at the time, she met criteria for Bipolar Unspecified, which actually means you don't meet criteria for Bipolar 2."
How did Lowry feel about this revelation?
Never Miss an
Daily updates from the heart of Hollywood, right to your inbox
By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you’re agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
"I do feel like this is truly what my diagnosis is," she said. "So, I'm feeling a lot better."
