How do you get diagnosed with depression?

Question

I don't think i am, though i may have been at one point. Though that is not important, what i need to know is how the diagnosis possess works. Are there psych tests? Blood tests? MRIs? How do doctors come up with a "medically depressed" conclusion. How long does it take? so on so forth. the more info the better :D

Answer 1

No Blood tests or MRIs test but Dr. will evaluate you base on the assessment test which consists of some questions about your present and past emotional stage. Something like this in here:http://psychcentral.com/depquiz.htm

Answer 2

A lot of people do not know if they have depression. Depression has become one of the major psychology problems in the developing countries. Depression can develop when we are living in a stress environment. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not realise that they have depression. Today, I would like to share with you the symptoms of depression.

“The movie is really not nice.” “The food is tasteless”. “It is not interesting at all, I would rather stay at home.” If the statement is familiar to you, you could be attacked by depression. A depressed person mood is usually dejected, gloomy and joyless. They feel the world is boring and meaningless. The world is colourless and the only colour in their mind is black and white.

Some of the depressed patients complaint they have low self-esteem and deep feelings of inadequacy. They have low confident level on themselves and towards other people. Am I good enough? Other people don’t like me! I’m not being welcome. These statements are common statements appear in their mind due to their low confident level.

When you realise that you frequently worries and frets, you might be attacked by depression. I have a lady patient who can go back home to check if she has turned of the tap, switched off the electricity, locked the door, closed the window for several times before they went out from their house. At first, she thought she was being forgetful but in reality, this was the initial symptoms to develop depression. Hence, early detection could prevent formation of depression.

Some participating in yahoo answer session, I realised that a lot of people had symptoms of self-derogatory during depression. They felt relief after hurting themselves. They were not sure the reasons they were doing so. If this problem is not rectified immediately, depression is developed and this would lead to suicidal case. Self-derogatory is a serious symptom that needs immediate attention.

A depressed patient engages in critical and judgmental attitude towards both self and others. They are not satisfied with the people next to them. No matter what they did, how well they try, the depressed patient always feels they are not right. My mother was undergone depression after my dad past away. When we bought her new mattress, she kept complaining the previous was soft and the new mattress was too hard and she couldn’t sleep at night. We brought her out for lunch, no matter which restaurant we went she felt the food was not delicious. The judgemental attitude would not be realised by them but people next to them would suffer from this personality.

Some of the depressed patient would be highly pessimistic and complaintive. During working with the depressed patients, I found that their world is full of sadness. They felt that the world was hopeless. They always labelled themselves with “bad luck”, “no hope” and other pessimistic words. Some of the aggressive patient would start to complaint. One of my friends received a letter from the patients with the statement, “You consultancy is not professional enough”. In fact, the patient did not even know the term professionalism in medical practices!

Experiences a great deal of guilt and regret is the last general symptoms of depression. Most of the suicidal cases are generally related to this feeling. These patients feel that nothing much they can do and the suicidal would be their last choice. When this idea becomes a core believe, they tend to suicide. When we realise this element appears among our friends, we have to remind them it is a symptom of depression.

As a psychotherapist, long term goals are set to brighten downcast mode, improve self-esteem and feeling of self-worth, decrease ruminative worry, enhance optimism, reduce feelings of guilt and remorse, reduce griping and complaining, facilitate positive interpersonal relationships and finally expand active problem solving, thereby decrease passive resignation.

Answer 3

Well i think they will diagnose you with depression just to sell meds, last year i was sick alot, i kept getting colds for a few days at a time. Im not sure why i was but i was just not feeling well, not depressed at all just low tolerance to colds. anyways my mom took me to the Doctor and they did a bunch of tests, asks questions, even a blood sample and there conclusion was that i was depressed and they wanted to put me on meds.

Answer 4

I think the key is length of time.  If you are experience typical signs of depression (feeling sad for no reason, hopelessness, no interest in activities, etc.) for more than 2 solid weeks, they may very likely diagnose it as depression. But there could be other things going on to -- only my seeing your doctor and/or a mental health professional can you get the correct diagnosis and start with one of the many treatment plans there are for depression.