Dangers of Misdiagnosis — Cautionary Tale for AU Teen — December 2018

In a classic example of passing the buck between medical and psychological diagnosis, Mariana Tana — a teen in Sydney, Australia — was misdiagnosed as fabricating her seizures and given mental health classifications including dissociative identity disorder (DID) until it was finally found that she had a rare and potentially fatal or disabling brain disease called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

Reported on by ABC.net.au (AU), the teen is now getting appropriate treatments and is an example of how medical issues need to be completely and thoroughly ruled out before insisting that someone is fabricating symptoms, delusional, or malingering. Professionals: believe your clients.

Article content includes non-detailed mention of suicide, several mental health misdiagnoses (mistakenly using “multiple personality disorder”), and the ending of the article applauds Mariana for achieving ableist goals like catching up on schoolwork and graduating top-of-class.