Self-Management of Depression

When one is feeling low, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is going through the throes of clinical depression, i.e., major depressive disorder. There are several conditions that may mimic clinical depression but don’t reach the severity or pervasiveness of the former condition or are symptomatically distinct. It is important to recognize these so that one may not unnecessarily get prescribed medications or started on psychotherapy as some of these conditions are time limited or may remit on their own. At the same time, some of these conditions such as complicated grief may need specialized therapy. Conditions that resemble depression but are not depression include the following: Sadness: Depression is more than the normal pangs of sadness one gets when experiencing a stressful situation. Depression is a more pervasive and persistent change in your mood along with changes in your physiological functions such as sleep, appetite, and energy level. Although stress can trig...

What is Self Assessment? Unlike other fields of medicine where illnesses can be diagnosed using laboratory tests or imaging techniques, psychiatry heavily relies on an individual’s account of their current and past symptoms. This is also true for depression. However, recounting one’s depressive symptoms without using an objective self-assessment tool is fraught with inaccuracies. People overemphasize symptoms that need urgent attention and miss some, especially if they are unaware of the full spectrum of depressive symptoms. What are the Available Tools for Self-Assessment? The internet is flooded with the so-called "depression tests" with questionable validity. The following self-assessment tools have been extensively used in research and/or clinical settings and can be downloaded for no charge from the internet.  Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self Report (QIDS-SR 16 ): This is a 16-item self-rating scale used for screening depression or assessi...

Grief and depression may have some overlapping symptoms such as sadness, crying, fatigue, reduced concentration, and sleep and appetite disturbances. However, grief and depression are not the same. Grief is a normal reaction to a loss, whereas depression is a clinical condition. Other distinguishing features between grief and depression are as follows (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Shear, 2012):   Although in grief, individuals feel sad and are tearful, the predominant mood in grief is a feeling of emptiness and loss. In contrast, in depression, the depressed mood is persistent, and there is an inability to anticipate happiness or pleasure. Bereaved people feel sad because they miss a loved one, whereas individuals with depression feel sad because they see themselves and/or the world as inadequate, flawed, or worthless. Self-esteem is preserved in grief, whereas depression is usually characterized by feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing. Feelin...