Depression Test: Do I Have Depression?

Depression, clinically called major depressive disorder, is a low mood that sticks around with a set of other changes riding along with it. Interest drains out of things you used to like. Sleep goes wrong in one direction or the other. Energy drops, focus goes, and your read on yourself turns harsh. To count clinically, that has to be running most of the day, most days, for at least two weeks, and it has to be costing you something.

It is one of the most common mental health conditions in the world, and it is also one of the most treatable. That second part gets left out a lot.

Depression also keeps company. It shows up alongside anxiety, OCD, and body focused repetitive behaviors often enough that a lot of the people who find this page are dealing with two things at once.

Sadness is a normal response to something. A loss, a rejection, a hard week. It has a shape, it moves, and it lifts on its own once the thing that caused it settles.

Depression does not track with events the same way. It stays past the point the circumstances explain, it touches mood and sleep and energy and appetite and thinking all at once, and it does not clear just because life improves. Plenty of people are doing fine on paper and still cannot get off the couch.

It also does not always feel like sadness. For a lot of people, especially men and teenagers, it shows up as irritability, or as nothing at all. Flat. Muffled. Going through the motions and waiting to feel something about any of it.

Depression works on mood, body, and thinking at the same time. It looks different on different people, and the intensity moves.

• Low mood, or an empty feeling, that hangs around without anything specific behind it
• Losing interest in the things that used to pull at you, including people
• Sleep going wrong, lying awake, waking at four, or sleeping ten hours and still flattened
• Tired in a way that rest does not touch, where small tasks feel like large ones
• Eating a lot more or a lot less than usual, with weight moving to match
• Trouble concentrating, reading the same paragraph twice, or stalling on small decisions
• Feeling worthless, guilty over things that are not yours, or like a burden on the people around you
• Moving and talking more slowly than usual, or the opposite, restless and unable to settle
• Thoughts about death, about not being here, or that people would be better off without you

Depression takes away the motivation first, then waits for you to do the rest. You cancel the plan because you would be bad company. You skip the walk because it will not help. You stop texting back because what is there to say. Each one of those is reasonable in the moment, and each one removes something that used to feed you.

This is why treatment for depression puts so much weight on behavior. Not because your thoughts do not matter, but because the fastest way into the loop is through what you do on an ordinary Tuesday.

Depression responds to treatment. For moderate and severe depression, therapy plus medication tends to beat either one on its own, and for milder depression the behavioral work alone often does it.

• Behavioral activation. Rebuilding contact with the things that used to give you something back, in pieces small enough to be doable on a bad day. It sounds too plain to work. It has some of the strongest evidence in the field.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy. The most researched talk therapy for depression. You learn to catch the automatic read on yourself, test it instead of swallowing it, and change the patterns keeping the low mood in place.
• Medication. SSRIs and SNRIs help a lot of people, particularly with moderate to severe symptoms. They work best with therapy running alongside. A prescriber is the person to talk to about whether it fits you.
• Mindfulness based cognitive therapy. Good evidence for keeping depression from coming back in people who have had several episodes.

If your symptoms are mild, a structured self directed program is a reasonable place to start. If they are moderate or severe, or if thoughts of death are in the picture, work with a licensed professional.

This screening uses the PHQ-9, the Patient Health Questionnaire, one of the most validated depression measures there is. It asks about the nine symptoms that define major depressive disorder and how often each one has been happening over the past two weeks. Doctors and therapists around the world use the same nine questions as a first step, and to track whether treatment is working.

It is not a diagnosis. Only a licensed professional can give you that. What it gives you is a clear picture of whether your symptoms match the pattern of depression and how heavy they look right now, which is enough to know what kind of help to ask for.