How do I know that someone is depressed?
Depression is hard to recognize, because depression can manifest in a lot of ways. An experienced doctor or psychotherapist can recognize it at a glance, but how can you estimate if you have a depression or not, or if someone in your environment has a depression or not. In this article, we explain a few alarm signs.
How do I recognize a depression?
Their are many manifestations of depression. A depressed person often shows signs of the different manifestations depression can have. They're not different diseases, they're just different manifestations of the same disease:
1. Depressed? The psychological side of depression
The mental signs of depression are rather instinctivly:
In the first stage of the mental depression, you feel unhappy, pessimistic, down, despondent, hopeless and without confidence. You have few to no hope in the future. Often you can't even imagine the future.
In the second stage, the complaints worsen and every form of feeling disappears : you feel empty, almost as you don't feel a thing. The centra of the brain, that controls positive and negative feelings, are affected. This is perfect irriversible if you search for help, if not in combination with a good online self-helpprogram.
2. Depressed? The physical depression
The physical signs of depression are mostly an unexplainable feeling of physical exhaustion and fatigue, even if objectivly there is no reason to feel tired.
3. Depresed? The social depression
On the social side of depression, you're isolating yourself: you avoid contact with people because you feel bad or even worthless. You don't ask for help or even refuse help from others, regardless that you could use help. You feel that others wouldn't understand you anyway, so you rather isolate yourself than having to experience a confrontation with people that don't understand you.
Online self-helpprogram treating depression
A study conducted by 15MinuteMe, published in the Artsenkrant of 2011, shows that the average participant who follows the online self-helpprogram scores 77% better after one month on the depression test and feels 40% happier after 3 weeks. That's why online self-help nowadays is a worthy alternative for therapy with lighter depressions, or a good addition of therapy with severe depressions.
Online selftest for depression: am I depressed?
We developed an easy online sefltest for you. If you fill in this test, you know your depression score in a few minutes. This score can help evaluate your progression in solving your depression.
Dr. Paul Koeck
