Depression or not?

[Pemmu]

so idk if i have depression or not
but i googled signs/symptoms of depression

and im getting
- you can’t sleep or you sleep too much
- you can’t concentrate or find that previously easy tasks are now difficult
- you feel hopeless and helpless
- you can’t control your negative thoughts, no matter how much you try
- you have lost your appetite or you can’t stop eating
- you are much more irritable, short-tempered, or aggressive than usual
- you’re consuming more alcohol than normal or engaging in other reckless behavior
- you have thoughts that life is not worth living

or

- Difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions
- Fatigue and decreased energy
- Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and/or helplessness
- Feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism
- Insomnia, early-morning wakefulness, or excessive sleeping
- Irritability, restlessness
- Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
- Overeating or appetite loss
- Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems that - do not ease even with treatment
- Persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" feelings
- Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts

or

- Feeling sad or "empty"
- Feeling hopeless, irritable, anxious, or guilty
- Loss of interest in favorite activities
- Feeling very tired
- Not being able to concentrate or remember details
- Not being able to sleep, or sleeping too much
- Overeating, or not wanting to eat at all
- Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts
- Aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems.

and they all apply
except the alcohol one
too young lul

idk guys
help?  

[Menketi]

Hey love,

Google gives a lot of information but unfortunalty not all is true.

What I would advise is to see your doctor and tell him how you feel and what bothers you. Most of the time they can refer you to a psychologist. They can help you, by training to feel better wink

I hope this helps wink  

[Pemmu]

Menketi

Hey love,

Google gives a lot of information but unfortunalty not all is true.

What I would advise is to see your doctor and tell him how you feel and what bothers you. Most of the time they can refer you to a psychologist. They can help you, by training to feel better wink

I hope this helps wink

i would
but im not the type of person that tells people my problems
idk

but thanks for trying to help!  

[Menketi]

Baekhyunniee

Menketi

Hey love,

Google gives a lot of information but unfortunalty not all is true.

What I would advise is to see your doctor and tell him how you feel and what bothers you. Most of the time they can refer you to a psychologist. They can help you, by training to feel better wink

I hope this helps wink

i would
but im not the type of person that tells people my problems
idk

but thanks for trying to help!

I know it feels a bit silly to go to your doctor for this. But they need to keep it in secret that is their job. They wont laugh at you or make you feel ridiculous, no they do not do that. They will listen and maybe he or she can help you. Talking about what bothers you can really help.  

[ur weenis]

I was diagnosed with it a few years ago, it sucks emotion_sweatdrop .
Go check for a doctor, or seek for therapy help.
That doesn't sound good. I know the feeling of it.
It was bad enough that I had to take pills.
I hope you feel better, dearie.

 

[Quiet Naiad]

As someone who's gone through the process of both self and official diagnosis, I can tell you that all the doctor's going to ask you is if you've been feeling in a 'slump' for at least two weeks- if you say yes, they'll tick off the box for depression. It's less thorough than the research you've been doing- the only difference in 'legitimacy' is that the person saying 'you're depressed' has a degree.

So with that in mind, I say go with your gut feeling. You don't need to fill out every possible symptom of something to qualify; if the experiences of people affected by depression seem to resonate with yours, then there's a good chance that there's a correlation.

I won't push a verdict on you because you know yourself better than I do, but if you decide that you want to use that term for what you're feeling, please know that I'm always open to PMing/replies if you want to talk/ask for advice. Working this stuff out alone sucks, and if you need an outlet I'm here for ya heart  

[loonaboots]

well, for starters, i wouldn't self diagnose yourself via google or anything like that. it's dangerous, really dangerous. i wouldn't self diagnose myself with a physical illness, so i wouldn't diagnose my mental health by myself.

in short, i would definitely go see a psychologist or someone like that about getting diagnosed if you're worried you might be depressed. if you're in college, i'd look at mental health services, see what they can do.

and doctors don't check off a box if you're feeling in a slump. that's highly unprofessional, and as someone whose parent is a doctor, i can tell you that that's a great way to get in hot water impressively fast (and as someone who had severe childhood anxiety, i can tell you that they don't just check off a box that asks if you're "anxious right now" or similar).

don't go with your gut feeling on this. there's a lot of things that this could be, not just depression (although, it's also likely it could be depression, or a type of it, etc. etc.) this isn't meant to make you freak out and think you're dying, i'm just saying that many things can mimic eachother.

tl;dr: go see a doctor or a professional who can help you with this. self diagnosis is dangerous, and not a good idea under any circumstances with things like this. if you have access to mental health services or something like this, start there.  

[Quiet Naiad]

loonaboots

well, for starters, i wouldn't self diagnose yourself via google or anything like that. it's dangerous, really dangerous. i wouldn't self diagnose myself with a physical illness, so i wouldn't diagnose my mental health by myself.

in short, i would definitely go see a psychologist or someone like that about getting diagnosed if you're worried you might be depressed. if you're in college, i'd look at mental health services, see what they can do.

and doctors don't check off a box if you're feeling in a slump. that's highly unprofessional, and as someone whose parent is a doctor, i can tell you that that's a great way to get in hot water impressively fast (and as someone who had severe childhood anxiety, i can tell you that they don't just check off a box that asks if you're "anxious right now" or similar).

don't go with your gut feeling on this. there's a lot of things that this could be, not just depression (although, it's also likely it could be depression, or a type of it, etc. etc.) this isn't meant to make you freak out and think you're dying, i'm just saying that many things can mimic eachother.

tl;dr: go see a doctor or a professional who can help you with this. self diagnosis is dangerous, and not a good idea under any circumstances with things like this. if you have access to mental health services or something like this, start there.

Hi, I can tell this was about my previous reply so I might as well respond directly.

Many people, especially women and people of color, often have to self-diagnose because the medical establishment tends to take their problems less seriously in both physical and mental fields. I had to do some digging both through the vague medical records I had and of more recent research to find out I was autistic, because when I was young autistic research related to girls was nonexistent. Medical knowledge is almost always centered around white men, and it can lead to serious neglect of the problems that people outside that group can have (see: women being unable to recognize women-specific heart attack symptoms). This isn't even counting in financial troubles, lack of social/family support, etc that prevent people from getting the Official Diagnosis.

Second, mental health in general is a whole different ball game. I've run the gamut, I've seen both GPs and therapists, and I can tell you that that question I listed is literally all they ask because a good practitioner knows that you know yourself best. Depression isn't some big puzzle it takes a professional to solve; it's pretty easy to tell when something's gone awry. I was depressed for several years before I got a therapist to confirm that I was depressed. Nothing changed, except that I got someone with Credentials(tm) to agree with me. Comparing anxiety diagnosis to depression diagnosis is comparing apples and oranges, so I won't go there. This is about depression, which is literally as simple as "You have a variety of symptoms based on your unique experiences but overall if you've been unable to get out of feeling blue for a long period of time then something's probably going on".

Yea, something else could be going on, since I don't know what you're going through and depression can be a comorbid condition (i.e. it couples itself with something else, like anxiety), but honestly if you've done your research then there's not really a problem. Self-diagnosis is often even more valid than Professional Opinions because it involves this level of self exploration (partly caused by self-doubt since brainweirdness is tricky like that), and if you've checked trustworthy sources and think it fits, then go with your gut.

On a broader note, self diagnosis isn't checking one page on WebMD and agreeing that you have something; it's trying to figure out yourself based on both your experiences/symptoms and medical information (which is now easily accessible to the masses thanks to the internet). Self diagnosis could only be dangerous if you somehow managed to get dangerous treatments without getting confirmation from a doctor, which as you stated, would never happen because doctors know better. With depression there's very little risk except with certain medications if you're taking medications that will have reactions to the new ones (ex. using SSRI's if you're being treated for bipolar disorder), and given the nature of the symptoms of depression it's pretty hard to misdiagnose yourself.

I've looked on both sides of the issue and I can say for sure that people who self-diagnose often end up being right because they have done their research so vigorously. It's a sad world that we have to do that ourselves rather than trust our doctors (who often end up dismissing patients' concerns- see the first paragraph), but especially with the invention of the internet we now have more powerful tools than ever to actually be able to put names to what we experience. The medical establishment isn't infallible, and even if we eradicated the problems that continue to plague it today the fact still remains that the person being treated knows more about their mental health than anyone else. Trust yourself.

Sorry OP for going off-topic a bit, but this is something I feel very strongly about. I've been brought to tears because people didn't believe my own feelings about what I was experiencing, and gone through the subsequent roller coaster of emotions when I got confirmation that I had been right all along. It costs so much more to doubt people when they say something's wrong. Better mental health care begins with believing that the patients know what's going on in their own heads.

Anyway, this response got longer than expected, so I'll cut myself off here. Best of luck to you OP heart  

[loonaboots]

Amphy the Nereid

hi,

that was a general comment that mentioned self diagnosis, using arguments and common rhetoric. i wasn't calling you out, nor mentioning you. but, since you replied:

i never claimed that the medical establishment is "infallible," what i said was that self-diagnosis (especially mental health) is a dangerous, dangerous thing to do to oneself, and going to a medical professional who went through over 7 years of training in order to do that job is a far better option, not only including the opinion of someone trained to do just that (as well as high rates of abuse of medicine among those who self-diagnose). personally, i'd take my chances with a medical professional through outlets (either paying to get diagnosed with insurance, a clinical trial that provides a diagnosis, a free clinic, or whatever resource i have available).

furthermore, your argument with autism is baseless. as you said, "apples to oranges."

as for "whole different ball game"... nowhere have i said that it's similar to a physical diagnosis. all i said was that i wouldn't diagnose myself with a physical condition for obvious reasons, and it therefore makes sense to not diagnose myself with anything mental- as i've said already, many things mimic eachother. as well as that, there are multiple nuances in a symptom that have to be taken into account. furthermore, as often common with mental illness symptoms, much of the time some symptoms are invisible to the person- as i've said, nuances... that a person who's been trained to diagnose people have been trained to spot and have likely seen before.

symptoms on paper =/= the presentation of a symptom in a person.

that's not even touching on the fact that you may know a symptom, but the knowledge an untrained person would have on that is face-value/ basic, at best. clearly, basic knowledge of a symptom is obviously the best way to go, right? right.

and speaking as someone who was also put through a diagnosis criteria for depression (and came out not having it), i can say that that's definitely not the case for what the diagnosis is. i was brought in, had an interview conducted, had some questions asked, and then they brought me out and talked to other people. a follow-up session was then scheduled at a later date, in order to get a broader scope of day-to-day things. then it was seen i didn't have depression.

furthermore, "...unable to get out of feeling blue for a long period of time then something's probably going on" isn't depression, it's "you have a symptom of feeling blue for a while, let's see what it could be a part of." try again.

and yes, there is a problem if you've only "really done your research"- there's this phenomenon called extrapolation, meaning that you automatically make the symptoms you see in yourself worse. simply put, a person will automatically see the exact same symptoms in themselves as worse than in another person. a welcome evolution survival thing for sure, but also a very good reason why you really shouldn't self-diagnose at all. this being said, checking "trustworthy sources" and "going with your gut"? nope, do not pass go or collect $200.

"(which is now easily accessible to the masses thanks to the internet)" nope, it's still dangerous. not only do people extrapolate (everyone does, it's not a select few people), you also lack the training to diagnose yourself, and even if you did have the training, it is beyond unethical to diagnose yourself for reasons i've stated. no trustworthy medical professional would diagnose themselves with a medical condition.

furthermore, let's talk about misdiagnosis for a second, as that's one of the things you keep hinting at. yes, there are definite rates for self diagnosis. but some of the main reasons people don't get the correct diagnosis? a failure to report all their symptoms, not completing given tests, and attempting to diagnose themselves.

as for people being right... yes, sometimes people are right. but do the people who end up being right make it okay? no, absolutely not. i don't stop going to the doctor just because a doctor one time was wrong, people, no doctors can ever be trusted again.

that's ridiculous, idiotic thinking, and i wouldn't blame someone if they smacked me on the head with a pan for thinking that way. because it's ridiculous.

i'd also suggest reading this paper. it's a paper, but it also summarizes much of what i've said and adds on to much, as well as including some sources.

tl;dr: it's dangerous, there's multiple things a person can't see/ natural factors (i.e. extrapolation) that make it even moreso, and you're not a medical professional with the insight and training. there's also multiple places to go if you have financial troubles and so on. a self-diagnosis is a sad, sad, idiotic thing to do with your mental health, and shouldn't be done.  

[Quiet Naiad]

[quote:"loonaboots"]

I don't have the mental energy to read this, at this point I can tell no ones going to budge, and none of this arguing is gonna help OP. I'm gonna disengage because I have midterm papers to write. Anyway, please don't go near mentally ill people ever again. We're done here.

Edit: mobile messed up the quote but you'll probs see this anyways so don't consider it a vague. If I get home I'll fix the quote. Peace out