Wing of Madness Depression Guide: Recognizing and Diagnosing Depression

At any given time, 19 million Americans are suffering from a form of depression. Not only does this affect their lives, but the lives of those around them. Since depressive disorders are also are a major cause of lost productivity in the workplace, there is an economic impact on all of us as well as a personal one.

Depression is also one of the few potentially fatal illnesses that is treatable. It's impossible to know how many suicides could be prevented by proper diagnosis and treatment, but the tragedy is that there are certainly many that could be prevented, but aren't.

Depression is under-diagnosed and under-treated. There are several factors at work here. One is the failure of many general practictioners to recognize depression in a patient. Another factor is the lack of understanding most people have about the symptoms of the illness, which prevents them from seeing depression symptoms for what they are. Also, the general inertia created by being depressed is itself a barrier to taking action.

At this point, diagnosing depression and other mental illnesses is not a cut and dried, simple matter. There are no definitive medical tests that can be performed, and there are many types of depression that are different from each other in fairly subtle ways.

A good place to start is Self-Screening for Depression, which contains links to several online tests. Although these self-tests don't take the place of an evaluation by a medical professional, they will give you an idea of what your symptoms may be saying.

Your partner in finding out whether you are depressed or not is your doctor. After ruling out any physical causes, such as thyroid dysfunction, the doctor will ask a series of questions covering family history, past and current medical problems, and current state of mind. The doctor will also try to determine if there have been past episodes of depression.

The doctor will compare your symptoms to the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to determine if you do have depression, and if so, which form. A good mental health professional will not rely solely on the DSM-IV, however. If a patient is displaying four instead of five of the criteria, that does not mean that he or she does not need treatment. Depressive disorders occur along a continuum from mild to severe, and it's possible to fall somewhere between them.

If you think you have depression, or know someone who does, it is important that you know as much as possible about the different kinds of depression to determine whether the doctor is diagnosing and treating it properly. You are, in essence, your own second opinion.