A questionnaire asking about sadness would have missed me. My emotions didn't take the detour over sadness on their way to not caring anymore.
Asking me about hopelessness would also have missed me outside of my deepest downs.
While, in retrospect, I did become more easily irritated by people (especially when asked to do something when trying to wind down), asking people around me about acting out would have missed me, as I generally like my fellow humans and have a desire to please and respect for people teaching me something, so expressing that irritation would have been rather rare. It also would have been short lived as I'm quick to forgive.

The best ways to have discovered my depression earlier would have been to

ask me about feeling overwhelmed by all I felt I needed to do
note how long and often I needed downtime
note how I increasingly failed to do things I needed to do in time or at all
ask me about feeling like I'm wasting my potential and/or disappointing people around me
ask me if I thought I was lazy despite not wanting to be
maybe ask me about being more easily irritated rhan I used to be

Because this wasn't caught, I spent years with undiagnosed depression. Years in which unhealthy coping mechanisms had time to entrench themselves. It was only caught because suicidal thoughts scared me so much that I sought help when they appeared a second time.

[–] Tsunominohataraki@sub.wetshaving.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good to hear you’re better, but it seems weird that your symptoms weren’t caught earlier. Even a very simple questionnaire like the MADRS has explicit sadness as only one dimension. You would have been asked for lack of initiative/procrastination, stress/anxiety and negative self-talk. Sounds like someone didn’t do their job properly (unless you hid your symptoms from your family doctor or didn’t go, of course).

[–] curiosityLynx@kglitch.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For a long time I (and people around me) just believed I must have become a lazy person and that I just needed to get over myself. The idea that I might be ill didn't even come up. When I struggled to write my bachelor's thesis I did visit an insurance-approved psychologist, but all that guy did was trying to find ways I could motivate myself, with no attempt to find out what was causing me to struggle in the first place rather than just reinforce my perception that I must just be lazy. After a couple of months I stopped going because all those visits did was making me feel worse. Also, because I chose to go to a psychologist directly rather than being delegated there by a doctor/psychiatrist, insurance only covered half of the cost, so it was a waste of money as well.

Really the first idea that it might be a mental illness rather than a personality flaw and being a general failure of a person didn't come up at all until I read a book in which I saw a lot of myself in the protagonist's mother who was said in the book to have depression. That same week I had my second bout of suicidal ideation, which drove me to get help asap.

load more comments (5 replies)