How do you know whether or not you're suffering from Depression?

What are the sypmtons/criteria?

You feel sad. Actually, I'm not sure, maybe one should talk to a doctor, if they're worried. ;)

I think you'll find out for yourself once you reach that state of mind. I don't think it's something to look forward to though.

And say what?

"How do I know whether I'm just depressed a lot or suffering from depression?"

I honestly don't know.

You're right, it's not.

I've had it for awhile so I'll give my two cents on it.

When you have depression, there are a lot of symptoms to go along with it, it just depends what type of it you have. One symptom would be hypomania, if you're depressed, you sleep more, but if you're not, you stay awake for hours on end and sleep less.

A second would be that you feel like nothing could go wrong, euphoric in a sense, and then you hit rock bottom later on, feel horrible. Periods of depression can last for hours, or days. When it does, will power tends to be lacking, you won't want to talk to anyone, so forth. It's like having a split personality, you think oppositely of what you would normally, for a minute you could think the world is against you, then another minute say, "Why was I thinking that?" I've done that quite a few times.

That's the basics of it though.

You can tell by going to a psychologist and being diagnosed. You're certainly not going to be able to tell by asking on a message board, knowledgeable and well-meaning though the members are. Listing symptoms and experiences is useful and interesting, but they cannot express the degree of distress or the impact on functionality. I could go get my DSM and list the criteria for you, but you can't self-diagnose, and even if you did, what would be the point? You can't give yourself therapy or medication. It seems to me like you're probably feeling quite distressed about how you're feeling or behaving - the very best thing you can do is go talk to someone who has the knowledge and expertise to help you through it.

Not necessarily on both accounts. I found out what type of depression I had 3 months before the doctors did, and all you have to do is think up of your own methods of self therapy, it does work for some people, not all but some. You can't rely just on medication given to you, you also have to take a step in getting rid of it yourself.

Simply, you feel like shit, dont care much about anything, sad, pessemistic, and well..you have the "the world sucks" attitude.. XD that's my case anyways, but seriously i think one of the serious symptoms would be when you can't really think straight....

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">Not necessarily my dad had severe depression the psychologist saw was full of crap and tried to pin the way he was behaving on my Mom. A doctor who came said he just had a creative imagination.

We diagnosed his depression using our home medical books. We didn't have the exact type of depression right but were very close. Suffice to say I placed my Dads arse in the car and took him to a larger medical facility to get a 4th opinion. He broke down as I was driving him to the hospital for no apparent reason. He had really bad abnormal breath as well which had something to do with his chemical imbalance. When he got to the hospital he was all honky dory and smiley saying nothing was wrong. This Doctor had more sense and said something was definitely not right upstairs, and got the ambulance to take him against his will to a facility that could better diagnose the exact problem.

Having a degree means nothing if you don't have the wit and cajunas to use it properly. A degree just means you are learned in that field, doesn't give you the wits to apply what you learned. There are some really bad doctors out there who in some cases know less than us, well it is pretty much all in books if your willing to read. If you can read and do a little research you can make an approximate diagnosis. A psychologist can only offer advice and good many of them are full of crap, you want advice listen to Dr. Phil as he is good at is job although pretty much what he says is no more than good common sense.

You want to diagnose yourself. Start by asking your close friends, or family members have you been behaving slightly of what is normal for you or said anything they thought out of place. It is a little hard for us to tell if you are depressed because we don't see you on a daily basis. Do a little research on the subject, go to the library to look at medical books, if you think it is a real problem see a real medical Doctor not a psychologist, and get a second opinion if necessary, because if you have depression and don't get help it could get much worse and even affect your family and friends.

My uncle had a different kind of depression were he could go to sleep at the drop of a hat. Just wanted to sleep all the time no matter how much sleep he got.

Some people have to stay on there medication for life as there body chemistry will revert them back into there state as is the cast with both my uncle and dad. This is more of a phisical depression, people with mental depression as a result of loss of loved ones etc, can get off meds again if they can learn to cope with the outside force causing it.</font>

[ 02-10-2005, 04:53 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

Absolutely. I'm not a fan of medication by itself by any means. The truth is, though, that people who are depressed most often lack motivation and self-direction. The ability of a depressed person to devise methods of overcoming their own depression then are necessarily hindered. Having a trained professional who can help you develop coping strategies, as well as provide unconditional support and empathy cannot be anything other than beneficial.

Sigmar, the general criteria for major depression include a persistant sad mood and or a loss of pleasure in activities that used to be enjoyable. These are the major characteristics. These should be experienced more days than not for at least two weeks. Depressed people also experience appetite and sleep changes - either too much or too little of either. They feel fatigue, apathy, concentration problems, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, or suicidal thoughts. They need not experience all of these.

Of course, there are other disorders that fall under the umbrella of mood disorders other than major depression. These are less extreme - for example, you may not experience the sad mood for the full two weeks. Remember that mood disorders are cyclical. People aren't severely depressed for months on end (usually) - there are periods of relative normalcy. Also, people may experience mood changed during the day - often mornings are very difficult but symptoms recede during the day, or vice versa.

It is important that such feelings cannot be attributed to medical problems that you may not have any idea you have. This is one reason that professional advice should be sought.

Umm, you feel depressed, duh [img]tongue.gif[/img] Or you mean how do they define when you're clinically depressed? When you're depressed more often than not and have no positive thoughts?

Don't worry, it happens to all of us - in fact I think there are far fewer people who are rarely depressed than there are people who are often depressed.

edit: whoah, I never thought I had depression, but reading Aelia's second post, I have a scary number of those symptoms sometimes. But I tend to be like depressed for 2 days then fine for a day or two. Nah, I still don't think I have a major problem though.

[ 02-10-2005, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]

I added an edit to my earlier post, but also:

I think that depression is more common among young people. Older people are more used to themselves, have more realistic expectations and are more used to the trials and tribulations of life. My dad said he used to get depressed around my age, but never does any more.

]<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">The symptoms could be the same for both. Plain Depression is mental, affected and caused by outside forces like your boss is a dick, your girl friend dumped you. While most people get over this type of stuff some do not and it can start becoming clinically depressed. Usually some advice from Dr. Phil can get people on track, or they can take medication for a little while until they start to realize it is just there mind.

Clinical is almost all physical, the chemicals in your brain are in an imbalanced state. Nothing at all could have occurred to make you feel like crap. Say when something like a girlfriend dumping you occurs, you feel sad and you do have chemical changes occur but eventually they will reset and go back to normal once you stop feeling sorry for yourself. With clinical the chemicals in your brain just are not going to balance themselves, possibly ever without the proper medications and no amount of advice from Dr. Phil will ever help. You are just stuck that way. The symptoms for clinical can vary from extreme (voices in your head, someone controlling you) to just normal depression feelings (sadness for no reason for long periods, normal depression there could be sadness for a long period but there is a hard reason that caused it), but unlike normal depression they will never go away without help. That's the best I can do to describe the difference.</font>

[ 02-10-2005, 05:15 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">You bet!! Teens especially and pregnant women,
there bodies are undergoing lots of changes both phisical and chemical, plus day to day lives. To some extent all teens and pregnant women are insane but they normally grow out of it when they become adults, and a little while after giving birth. If not there is a bigger problem to be addressed.</font>

[ 02-10-2005, 05:18 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

Aelia, from your recent posts, you're saying that only doctors can make certain of this and will undoubtably help others. But just because people have a doctorate or degree in medicine does not make them a guaranteed help. Case and point, me.

About a month and a half ago, I went to see my psychiatrist to start taking medication, so she offered a particular one to me. Tegritol I believe it's spelt, is a very dangerous medication. She went into the explanation of it, sugar coated it, and said, "A bad reaction to it is a rash anywhere on your body, if that happens, stop taking it." Sounds reasonable right? Nope.

Tegritol is a medication to fight depression, that's true, but it's also dangerous as hell to be messing with. You get a rash on one place on your body, your palms, that's because it has an allergic reaction to your blood. If you abruptly stop taking it, it will kill you and it has proved more often than not to be fatal. It doesn't matter if you've spent one year or twenty in your field of expertise, that doesn't always make that person right by any means.

Well For about a whole year after I moved I went to school talked to noone didn't do anything my grades went to hell I came home went to sleep right after school then laid around till it was time to go to sleep and then got up and did that every day. Never left my house to go anywhere but to school. If that helps at all

Huh. See how cool self-diagnosis can be :rolleyes: .

While of course I understood that there is a lack of understanding about what psychologists do and whether they are worthwhile and so on, which leads to negativity and mistrust about the profession, it is always disappointing to see it so starkly. Most psychologists are well-trained and use scientifically-supported methods and assessments. Some psychologists are crap and people have bad experiences, but there are crap people in every profession. If we decided not to use services because there are some incompetents practicing, then all service industries would be up the creek. It's funny that you hear about doctors misdiagnosing or treating people wrongly often - and yet the same mistrust and decision to not use their services doesn't follow.

There is also confusion in the general public about the difference between psychologists and counsellors and therapists. Most people think they are interchangeable - but that couldn't be more wrong. For example, in Australia, psychologists need a postgraduate degree which included over a thousand hours of clinical practice, or equivalent field experience under supervision. Counsellors need no training or expertise whatsoever - you could leave high school and hang up your counsellor shingle. There is also no recourse for incompetent or dangerous practice for counsellors, whereas psychologists must be accountable to a judicial board and can lose their registration for poor or negligent practice.

Re. clinical vs 'normal' depression. Really, it is a matter of degree, duration, level of functional disturbance, and appropriateness. For example, you could not diagnose someone with depression who is exhibiting all the symptoms of major depression if they have recently had a bereavement and have been depressed for two months. Clinical depression has a chronic duration, impacts significantly on functionality, and is relatively inappropriate for the person's situation. Chemical imbalances are very vogue - but the truth is that we don't really know whether the imbalance is the cause of the symptoms, or comes about because of the symptoms. Sometimes clinical depression does have a trigger, like a bereavement. Sometimes it doesn't. The fact is that anti-depressants work - so they must be having some effect with chemicals and receptors in the brain, so something is going on there. But it is also a fact that talking therapy works. The most effective therapy is a combination of both, especially for severely depressed people who need the anti-depressants to actually have the motivation to actually get up and go to therapy. Talking therapy is also the best means for long-term recovery. Recurrent episodes are common in depression, and anti-depressants are in no way a cure. If you treat depression with medication and then go off it, there is every chance the person will have another episode somewhere down the track and have to use medication again. It only works when you're on it. Talking therapy however, teaches coping skills and strategies that allow a person to prevent recurrent episodes, or deal with them themselves if they arise. It is generally accepted and scientifically supported that depression is caused/afffected by/exacerbated by maladaptive thinking patterns - reacting to situations in ways that encourage feelings of worthlessness or failure. Therapy that targets those thinking patterns and challenges and modifies then so they are helpful and realistic rather than destructive, are effective because then situations that occur later that could potentially trigger another depressive episode are dealt with more adaptively.

By the way, I love Dr. Phil. I think he's super. However, he knows as I do, that the sound byte therapy he gives on his show is just that - sound bytes with little substance. You will notice that with people he can see are actually seriously in trouble have a lot of follow-up and therapy with him or people he has recommended in their town or whatever.

Aelia, from your recent posts, you're saying that only doctors can make certain of this and will undoubtably help others. But just because people have a doctorate or degree in medicine does not make them a guaranteed help. Case and point, me.

About a month and a half ago, I went to see my psychiatrist to start taking medication, so she offered a particular one to me. Tegritol I believe it's spelt, is a very dangerous medication. She went into the explanation of it, sugar coated it, and said, "A bad reaction to it is a rash anywhere on your body, if that happens, stop taking it." Sounds reasonable right? Nope.

Tegritol is a medication to fight depression, that's true, but it's also dangerous as hell to be messing with. You get a rash on one place on your body, your palms, that's because it has an allergic reaction to your blood. If you abruptly stop taking it, it will kill you and it has proved more often than not to be fatal. It doesn't matter if you've spent one year or twenty in your field of expertise, that doesn't always make that person right by any means. </font>[/QUOTE]Absolutely true. However, people who have degrees and doctorates weren't just handed them. I would say it was fairly logical that someone who has been trained by experienced professionals and had experience themselves would be in a better position to perform their job than someone with no training or experience whatsoever. Being informed as a patient is critically important. Obviously you were able to make an informed decision about whether to take the medication, and I would agree that your psychiatrist should have been more frank with you about the drug - it seems to me that she was pretty negligent in how she explained the side-effects. But people in this thread are essentially warning people off professionals, especially psychologists, because of a few bad experiences, and as I commented in my last post, they wouldn't do this with other professions. This is my industry - I know there are bad clinicians out there. But that doesn't make a layman any better at practicing psychology than a psychologist.

By the way, that wouldn't have happened with a psychologist. They can't prescribe medication. And no one ever got a rash from CBT ;)

I agree. Certain diseases can trigger depression, so it's important that those are ruled out (for example diabetes). Because of that you should see a doctor. Also, depression isn't always just about psychological stuff, there can also be an imbalance in the body. That's why the medicine does help (though I agree that it doesn't in some cases).

I do agree with some people, though, that not all doctors are good. So, Sigmar, ask around who's good and who's recommended. Or go to one and see if you like them. If you don't, go to a different one. And don't let yourself be convinced to take medicine straight away. Have them explain the medicine to you. When I was depressed, the doctor actually drew pictures for me, and it took him quite a while to convince me. (I have a bit of a phobia of medicine, though. [img]tongue.gif[/img] ) Anyway, the medicine can feel horrible at first, but it did feel better for me after a while. I could think more when I got really depressed. I didn't think in loops anymore. But I guess that's different from person to person. I know some people can't stand the medicine and it doesn't help them at all, while it really helps others. [img]smile.gif[/img]

There are also things that you can yourself do. Talk to your family/ friends/ priest/ councellor in school about the problems, eat more healthy, exercise, don't drink, etc. But I don't know how badly you're depressed, so that might not help at all. :(

I know that, that's the job of a psychiatrist, I had a thread dedicated to discussing it remember?

I'm not saying that someone off the street could practice psychology any better than a trained psychologist, what I'm saying is because you have a degree in your hand doesn't necessarily mean you know what to do afterwards. As stated above, my psychiatrist lacks the sense to give me the full detail on a lethal drug, yet she went through twelve years of training. People should wield the obviousness not to give that type of medicine that can kill you, and try backing the argument by saying, "Well, even Tylenol can kill someone" (I'm aware it can but it didn't start out killing people).

As for not criticizing other professions (I believe I read that right), everyone has had some bad experience outside people in the medical field but I say what I do because I've never had good experiences with doctors. I know there are good ones out there, just haven't met them.

[ 02-10-2005, 07:27 PM: Message edited by: Gangrell ]

Good sign is that when you wake up and the first thing to enter your mind is "Oh F**k"... you might be a bit depressed.

'tleast if it's "Oh F**K, it's me." [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Huh. See how cool self-diagnosis can be :rolleyes: .

</font>[/QUOTE]Hey, what you pickin on me for? I wasn't doing any self-diagnosis, it was Gangrell going on about that.

Huh. See how cool self-diagnosis can be :rolleyes: .

</font>[/QUOTE]Hey, what you pickin on me for? I wasn't doing any self-diagnosis, it was Gangrell going on about that. </font>[/QUOTE]What's wrong Vask? Only like it when I'm pickin on you? :D

Huh. See how cool self-diagnosis can be :rolleyes: .

</font>[/QUOTE]Hey, what you pickin on me for? I wasn't doing any self-diagnosis, it was Gangrell going on about that. </font>[/QUOTE]I know! Sorry Vasky, I wasn't meaning to pick on you, I was using you as an example to pick on others lol :D

Something I noticed in a post you made earlier, Vask, about young people being depressed more than older people - that is true, BUT elderly people have quite high rates of depression, especially ones in nursing homes. Dementia is diagnosed a LOT when the person is actually suffering depression - there are only subtle differences between the presentations for each.

I know that I'm depressed because I breathe.

OK I couldn't read the whole thread. But my simple way to determine if you might have Depression is, if you are not enjoying things you normally enjoy. If you don't feel like doing things you normally would want to do, whether it is talk to a friend, play a game, go swimming, watch movies, whatever.

There are different kinds of depression. Someone in this thread has described Manic Depressive w/ the ups and downs. If you think you might have some kind of depression you should talk to a counciler or a doctor or a trusted person.

One low-level kind of common depression is Seasonal. It comes from getting shorter daylight hours and more dark, in the winter. This can be cured with a light made for this, it simulates sunlight in your house. I have one of those lights just to make sure I don't get this because I used to feel somewhat depressed in the winter.

You know you're depressed when you see a dwarf riding a mini motorbike and don't have a quiet chuckle to yourself. Seriously though, depression's a real downer :( ...sorry [img]graemlins/blueblink.gif[/img]

Yeah I meant people in their 40s and 50s etc. When they get very old, they start getting depressed again, either cos of their loneliness, body not working as well as it used to, or starting to worry about death etc.

Although of course IW members will never have to worry about that, I mean about getting lonely, by the time we get old we'll all be talking to 3D holographic projections of each other, proper telepresence etc. :D And case in point, johnny will never have to worry about depression as long as his arm is able to lift the beer bottle to his mouth. :D Besides, there're always straws and eventually intravenous injection of beer is possible :D

[ 02-11-2005, 07:49 AM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]