Lowry may be on MTV’s Teen Mom 2, but it took her appearance on another TV show to receive some potentially life-saving information.
Lowry, who was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder several years ago, was recently on an episode of The Doctors and found out that — despite previously being prescribed mood stabilizers and heavy therapy — she might not be bipolar after all.
The Doctors‘ Dr. Shahla Modir took another look at Lowry’s past diagnosis, her family history and symptoms and came up with a new take on Lowry’s medical condition.
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“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 [sic], but she didn’t actually meet the technical criteria for having a hypomanic episode.”
“So to have a diagnosis of bipolar II, 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 [sic] didn’t meet that criteria.”
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Though Dr. Modir doesn’t believe that Lowry fits the diagnosis for bipolar II, she did say that unspecified bipolar may be a more likely scenario.
“I do feel this is truly what my diagnosis is,” Lowry said of Dr. Modir’s take on her condition.
Lowry’s first diagnosis came in a particularly turbulent time in her life, which might have contributed to her misdiagnosis.
“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… I did psychiatric evaluation, and then he said I think that you are bipolar.”
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Lowry also revealed that the medications she was prescribed for her bipolar diagnosis weren’t helping her at all, so she stopped taking them, and as things in her life started to improve, she began to want to get a second opinion about being bipolar.
“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.”
Watch Lowry and Dr. Modir talk more about Lowry’s condition below.
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