How do you test for depression?
Answer:
People who are depressed can benefit from medication, but you shouldn't rely on the medication alone. You should also be receiving counseling.
I take Zoloft. It helps me to not feel like hurting others and/or myself. It keeps me from having suicidal thoughts. It keeps me from feeling anxious and agitated.
Counseling helps you see what kinds of thoughts you are having that are making you feel depressed, and teaches you how to change them.
Cognitive therapy teaches that our thoughts are what cause our emotions. Feeling follows action. A thought is an action. Depression is the feeling that comes from telling ourselves all kinds of negative things about ourselves.
Unfortunately, there is no magic pill that cures depression.
The following information is from the Dr.Phil website. (click on "Advice", then click "Life Strategies", scroll down and click "Internal Dialogue".
"Your internal dialogue powerfully programs and shapes your self-concept. If you believe you are worthy and strong, you will live up to that truth."
Then it is followed by some daily exercises.
The bottom line is this: You have to participate in your own recovery. Fight for sanity or die suffering as you wallow in self-pity. No other choices.
Damn, even your aviator looks depressed.
There is a simple questionnaire called the Beck Depression Inventory. You can find it online.
psychologists, psychiatrists and, perhaps to a lesser extent, psychotherapists seem largely at sea when it comes to diagnosing let alone treating depression.
in practice, working with various client groups, i have mostly seen doctors prescribing anti-depressants that caused many more problems than they ever solved...maybe you should ask yourself where a doctor, with all the incredible stresses of learning a HUGE body of knowledge that largely considers people as organic machines, would have the time to learn anything about people's emotions? you might even wonder whether someone with that sort of sensitivity COULD make it as a doctor? i'm sure there are some out there but have YOU met any?
the biggest area of mis-diagnosis, in my experience, lies in the confusion between 'stuck grief' and depression...i've yet to see a doctor get it right.
as a humanistic psychotherapist i would suggest my type of therapy as a possible cure..but then i would, wouldn't i!?!? and it's as hard to get an effective counsellor as it is to get a good doctor...but there's one difference...you can ask your therapist what they are doing and WHY - why they think it will help. if you're not satisfied with the answers then you can walk. as NO-ONE understands the brain/psyche well enough to understand what even a single anti-depressant is doing you are unlikely to get useful answers from a doctor - talk about the seratonin or dopamine or endorphine systems are just that, talk.believe me they are way more complicated than most doctors and drug compnaies care to admit and the chemical route is always chancey.
i'm not telling you to stop your meds - that can have really dangerous effects - but your search for a more scientific approach seems to me to be doomed from the outset. i am not a robe wearing guru type counsellor(!), i'm a real science freak too and would love to be able to tell you something different but all the drugs i have seen used are like sledge hammers that smash as much as they 'fix'.
you ever thought about psychotherapy as a workable alternative? i can say that i have at least seen that work some of the time (and i think i've had some sort of success with every depressed client i've worked with (he beams proudly!)..the thing is...only about 5% of those people i have seen diagnosed as depressed actually were and the other 95% were wasting their time treating it AS depression when there are actually EFFECTIVE ways to deal with the problem.
let us know what you think?
Hi, I'm afraid there isn't such a test and unfortunately conventional antidepressant pills only work in around a third of people anyway, as you are finding out.
The good news is that you don't just have to rely on antidepressants to help ease your depression. Take a look at the Self Help pages on the site in the sources box below for some ideas of other things that might help. These are the things that I used to help me beat depression.
Hope this helps.
oh definitely, there's all sorts of fake tests you can spend money on. the sky's the limit! God Bless the Pharmaceutical Industry
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