How to tell

As a first step you could look at the symptoms of depression to see whether they match your own symptoms.

Sometimes, however, it can be hard to look through a description of depression, or read the diagnostic criteria that professionals use, and apply them to ourselves. We can easily ignore things or too readily think "I've got that!"

Answering a set of simple questions is often better and provides an approximate answer to your question. A number of these self-rating scales or self-assessment tools are available. We have provided one of our own which we feel works well.

Try our self-test to see if you might have depression.

How to tell if someone else has depression

Just because we know someone well does not mean we will always notice when they have changed. Big changes or sudden ones are likely to be noticed, but if someone changes slowly it is easy to miss the change. Also, even people we know well (including those close to us) will not always reveal all their thoughts and feelings. Since we cannot expect to always realise that someone is depressed, we ought not feel guilty that we 'did not know'.

The sensible approach is to be aware that depression is not uncommon and what it is. Then, if you are worried that someone is depressed, the best thing to do is to talk to them about it and take them to see a mental health professional or suggest that they go.

For further information on depression see the following sections:

• Children
• A teenager or young adult
• Someone over 65 years of age
• Someone who has a medical illness
• Someone who is pregnant or a new mother