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-rating depression scale to see if you might have depression.