Yeah, I'd say it must be very hard to diagnose something like bipolar or a lot of other disorders too really. I'm "lucky" in that when I had that really big manic episode it was sort of a text-book example of what happens. Plus of course my wife was frantically calling my old psychiatrist saying she didn't know where I was and what the hell was he going to do about it. That got their attention.

Sometimes I think symptoms need to be really severe before anyone really notices.