How do you know if you’re depressed?
That’s what I’m gonna talk about in this video.
Stay tuned.
I’m Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I talk about mental health and self-improvement.
This is what clinicians use to diagnose mental disorders.
It’s called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition.
It’s our textbook.
So even though we don’t have blood tests to
diagnose or to prove that you’re depressed,
it’s still not a matter of guesswork.
There’s a cluster of symptoms that are associated
with being depressed.
In order to be diagnosed with depression,
you must have five of the following symptoms for
at least two weeks.
Also, all of these symptoms are present at least most of
the day and present almost every single day.
So, they’re just not fleeting.
So, you must have five of the nine.
First, we have a depressed mood.
People may say they feel sad,
hopeless or even empty.
In children and adolescents,
they can be more irritable than what you would expect,
just from regular childhood upset
or being on a moody teenager.
A second symptom is being unable to enjoy anything.
We call this anhedonia.
So, things that you used to enjoy you just don’t
get any pleasure out of anymore.
Then there’s weight loss or weight gain of five percent
or a decrease in or increase in appetite.
Insomnia or hypersomnia, and this would be,
insomnia would be trouble falling or staying asleep
and then usually sleeping only less than five hours.
Hypersomnia would be sleeping more than ten hours
and this could be continuous or it could
be a total of your nightly sleep plus your naps.
A fifth symptom is being slowed or restless.
I’ve had some patients tell me they can tell
when their depression is coming on,
because they feel their limbs getting really heavy.
Another symptom is being tired
or having low energy all day.
Then there’s feeling worthless
or having excessive guilty feelings.
You could have trouble thinking or concentrating
and making decisions.
Depression is a huge disrupter of your ability to
concentrate and focus,
and if you can’t focus or pay attention,
you will have trouble remembering things.
So therefore, depression can also cause memory problems.
And then we have thinking about death
or thinking about killing yourself.
Depression can really distort your perception about your future.
Things can look really bleak and get to the point
where you just want — you just want to end the pain.
As you can see, there’s a lot of symptoms,
but one important question we have to answer is:
How much is this, or are all these symptoms,
affecting your life?
Another way of putting it is:
How much dysfunction does this really cause?
One person can have several of these of
the listed symptoms but they’re still going to work each day,
and they’re still participating in social activities.
But they don’t feel happy inside.
They go to these social things,
they put on a fake smile,
but yet feel very empty while they’re there.
Then there’s another person
who may have trouble getting out of bed,
not going to work and some people even stop bathing.
And this is the person who’s probably not going to
pull out of this without some sort of professional help.
Whereas the first person may be able to slog through
without any kind of treatment
and then these symptoms eventually pass.
Now when I say treatment,
I’m talking about either therapy and / or medication
and I’ll have more about treatments in other videos.