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Does anyone know what depression is?

You don't take a blood test or get a brain scan or anything like that.

Instead, you do this: https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/educat...

> These patient assessment measures were developed to be administered at the initial patient interview and to monitor treatment progress, thus serving to advance the use of initial symptomatic status and patient reported outcome (PRO) information, as well as the use of “anchored” severity assessment instruments. Instructions, scoring information, and interpretation guidelines are included.

From that page, here's how you measure how severe your depression is: https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/Psychiatrists/Prac...

These are the "guidelines" in the article.

> Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much

Am I having trouble staying asleep because my alarm is going off? How much sleep is "too much"?

> Feeling bad about yourself—or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down

What about people that have let themselves and family down? Is that not valid?

> Poor appetite or overeating

Relative to what? I'm not being fed per gram with a feed chart. I have no idea how I'd answer this.

> Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way

This one's a trick question, because I think it's "nearly every day" for most people for at least a brief second per day? But say that and you might get shipped off to in-patient, so I know the answer is "never".

According to this thing, I probably have severe depression. I don't think I'm depressed though? There's no way to tell.

A better way to look at it might be that anyone who talks to a mental health professional has a good likelihood of leaving with a depression diagnosis, an SSRI prescription, and a follow up appointment.




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