Depression Diagnosis: Do You Need It to Heal?

S No.

100

do not index

ready to publish

backlinks

content score ss

# of words

834

publish date

Apr 21, 2022

✨POV✨: You despise labels. You think it's being put in a box, with constraints, as if you were a puppet. But you're also in two minds about your own mental health. You wish you were completely alright but guess what, you're not and you need a way out of this.

There are two schools of people - ones who believe that diagnosis is a must and the others that don’t believe mental health fits into neat little boxes. And such as life, they're both right and wrong.

When we google 'depression symptoms', did you know that many articles list symptoms of severe depression (clinically known as major depression because it has severe symptoms)? Major depression is not the same as ‘depression’, it is only a type. There is no one thing known as ‘depression’, it is only a reference to the category of depressive disorders.

The Clinical Depression Diagnosis 📝

Contrary to popular belief (and lots of pop-psych content floating on the internet), it does not happen so that a mental health professional signs off on a paper that we are 'clinically depressed'.

There's a lot of nuance to a depression diagnosis - the first is that there is no (one) such thing as clinical depression, there are many. Clinical depression refers to a host of over eight depressive disorders that are listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or DSM (the ultimate guide to diagnosing mental disorders). It is authored and regularly updated by the American Psychiatric Association (the leading voice for all things psychology).

The DSM lists diagnostic criteria for every type of mental illness: depression symptoms, how many must be present to qualify as the disorder, how long the symptoms of depression must be present and how to diagnose severity. To know more about the diagnostic criteria for depression, click here.

The most important symptom of depression that must be present for at least two weeks (for all depressive disorders) is a depressed mood.

How Does the Diagnosis Help? 🗝️

It feeds you the information you need.

Other than the most obvious reason of awareness, here are a few ways in which a diagnosis aids our journey of healing:

🫂 It lessens the burden on us

When we're already struggling with thoughts and feelings like, '', it can be overwhelming to be flooded by information on the internet. Asking for help or even acknowledging (to ourselves too) that we need help can be daunting. It can feel like we are weak or frail, for not being able to take care of ourselves. But that's where we've got to remind ourselves that that's the stigma of mental illness talking.

When we don't think twice before consulting a doctor for chronic physical discomfort, why do we hesitate when it comes to our mental health (when it is equally, if not more important than our physical health)?

We don't need to figure out everything on our own.

🧭 It helps us find the right direction

Because we are not trained mental health professionals, we may not completely grasp what we read on the internet. Or it is also possible that we read articles that supply us with half-truths or complete untruths.

Based on a few articles, we may believe that we really depression and go on to diagnose ourselves. But what if we get it wrong?

Misconceptions like these have the potential to render our efforts futile and even, detrimental.

It can be tempting to let some pop-psych quizzes tell us what we're thinking and feeling, but in the not-so-straightforward universe of mental health, trust the human voice more than some lines of code.

🧤 It helps us pick the right approach to treat depression

It is common to develop negative coping mechanisms as a way of quick-fixing our symptoms. And this happens because we don't understand what we're going through and how we can fruitfully channel our energy to heal.

And it's only common because depression is a bish, no cap. It makes us question ourselves, inundates us with negative thoughts & emotions, drains our energy, and pushes us into a different mold of a human being.

Did you know that a type of depression is treatment-resistant depression? This type of depression is almost immune to the therapeutic effects of therapy and medication. It needs a special therapy known as electroconvulsive therapy. And this approach to treatment could only have been discovered because of diagnosis.

Last Word on Mental Health 🤍

Like we need teachers in spite of having access to textbooks, we need our mental health doctors along with the knowledge available at our touch.

Instead of us trying to self-diagnose, self-medicate and risk our health in the process, it makes the most sense for us to break the stigma of mental healthcare and put ourselves first.

Note on Mental Disorders 🚩

Clinical Depression is never clear cut, making it harder to diagnose and treat. It is not unheard of for people with depression to self-harm or have suicidal thoughts. If you have such depressive symptoms, please use the national suicide prevention lifeline or contact a mental health professional to seek treatment options.

Some of the common clinical depression diagnoses are major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder and seasonal affective disorder (aka seasonal depression).