Question:
Is there a test, anything, that I could take to indicate the possibility of whether or not I suffer any from symptoms of depression?
I was diagnosed as clinically depressed several years ago, and remember quite distinctly the anger I felt towards the doctor who seemed to arrive at her diagnosis within the allocated 5mins.
Shortly after this, I was involved in an RTA as a pedestrian and quite seriously injured, when my GP medical file hit the hospital all hell broke loose, with me being transferred to a mental ward as soon as I was
physically well enough. It seems the witness reports of me "walking into oncoming traffic" were taken as a suicide attempt without any further investigation.
There was at the time something quite clearly wrong with me, but my (limited) knowledge of depression and its symptoms has only slight similarities and commonalities with what I suffer.
I only ask because I have just read a fascinating article in my local press about "one man's battle with manic depression", which mentions his frustration at taking 4x doctors and 8 years to accurately diagnose.
Answer:
There’s a test on www.prozac.com
I did a Google search (screening tests for depression) and found quite a few links to sites that provide quick online screening tests. However, the following two links are good, as I believe they are of the kind frequently
recommended or used by mental health professionals:
http://www.med.nyu.edu/Psych/screens/depres.html
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?id=973&type=doc&cn=Depress...
28Unipolar%29
This is the link to the Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=screening+tests+for... sion
I wish there were a blood test or something that could give a more immediate diagnosis - but as yet, nothing like that exists.
I wouldn't suggest using this as a way to self-diagnose - even doctors can't really do that, it needs an 'outside' view - but this site has some info and 'tests'.
It doesn't necessarily take long for an experienced GP to make a correct diagnosis; breaking the news to the patient and discussing what to do next, are what can take a long time.
Many people (such as me) have been influenced, possibly without knowing, by the stigma that our culture attaches to any kind of 'mental' illness, so when we get such a diagnosis our immediate reaction is 'no, not me! there must be some mistake'. The problem is not the illness, the problem is the stigma.
That sort of suicide does happen, all too often; I find myself sometimes thinking things like 'what if I were to walk off the pavement right now?' and I really don't think of myself as a 'suicidal' person - but if such a thought were to arise at a moment when I was feeling very 'low', or was trying not to think at all, then the possibilities are frightening.
That's why I'm careful to take the anti-depressants; they do help to keep my thoughts away from self-destruction.
That's a very unusual experience; Depression in its various forms is common enough for most GPs to have plenty of experience at spotting it. There are a lot of 'sub-species' of 'Depression', and different
'schools' give them different names, or divide them up differently, so one Psychiatrist might say 'dysthymia' and another might say 'chronic moderate clinical Depression', for example, but it's really not all that significant as far as I can see; what matters is getting appropriate help, not what label you get.
Perhaps the man you read about had the misfortune to suffer from a type of Depression that is particularly difficult to diagnose - or perhaps he hid or disguised his symptoms, to himself as well as his doctors, so well that no-one could make a correct diagnosis.
I do know that in my case, my GP always asked me 'Are you alright? is there anything else you want to discuss?' whenever I went for an Asthma check-up or anything else; but it wasn't until I'd got myself
into such a state that I really wasn't coping with anything at all, that I was prepared to admit that there was indeed 'something else' wrong. It took many years for me to get to that point. I think he had been aware of my Depressive symptoms for most of that time - but no doctor can offer treatment for an illness the patient hasn't sought help for, or admitted to having.
