how do you know if you're depressed that's what I'm going to talk about in
this video stay tuned
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks a psychiatrist and I talk about mental health and
self-improvement if that's up your alley then just click subscribe. 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 inside. 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 to you just want to end the pain. And
there's a difference between passive suicidality and active suicidality and
here's an example. Suppose you were crossing the street and you thought if a
car came and hit me right now I'd be fine with that.
That's that's passive suicidality. You don't have a plan or intention of ending
your life, but the prospect of doing something or having someone kill you is
an attractive option for you. People become actively suicidal when they start
formulating a plan in their head. Even though at the moment they're holding
back from acting on it. Active suicidality is an emergency and should
be treated in a hospital or crisis center setting where the person can be
in a safe environment until they're more stable. Here are some symptoms that I
commonly see that don't fit neatly on to the list that I just gave you and these
would be things like feeling like everything is hard. And this is how you
can end up not getting anything done. You just can't bring yourself to attend the
tasks. there's also frequent crying,
you can have a short fuse all the time that makes you very irritable or easily
angered. As you can see there's a lot of symptoms, but one important question we
have to answer is how much is this or 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 this 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. So that's it for now. Thanks
for watching and don't forget to subscribe