Testing and Assessment

Managing emotions, Testing and Assessment

Depression Test – Is this depression?

Everyone goes through difficult seasons of life, but there is a difference between a bad season and an episode of depression. Do you know the signs of depression?

Depression is one of the most common mental health diagnoses in the United States, with an estimated 17.3 million adults and 3.3 million adolescents having had least one depressive episode in 2017 (NIMH). Despite being so prevalent, a depressive episode can be one of the most isolating times in a person’s life, and its impacts can be far-reaching and devastating.

What is depression?

Though there are different kinds of depression, most depression begins with a similar set of symptoms.

Common symptoms may include:

Feeling sad, empty, and/ or irritable
Not feeling interested in things you once enjoyed, like hobbies, spending time with loved ones, and/ or sex
Difficulty getting things done, following through on tasks, and/ or focusing
Trouble with sleep, appetite, weight, and/or fatigue
Thoughts of hurting yourself

(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2013)

Who can give me a depression test?

Though you may be able to recognize these signs for yourself, it may be helpful to get a diagnosis from a therapist or doctor. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 35% of adults and 60% of adolescents never get treatment for depression. Talking to a professional about your diagnosis can help you get a diagnosis and then get linked to treatment.

Because there are different types of depression, an online depression test may not be able to help you understand what you are experiencing or what to do next. A depression test with a professional may help provide those answers and next steps.

If depression is common, do I really need treatment?

Despite being so common, depression can have a massive impact on your daily life, leading to:

Missing work/ school
Not making deadlines for work/ school
Feeling disconnected from loved ones
Not making progress or keeping up with other valued life areas, like finances
Turning to substance use to try and stop the pain

In turn, these problems lead to a negative response from the people around you. This criticism, and the feeling of falling more and more behind, can start to feel like you’re never going to get out.

What do I do if I think I have depression or want a depression test?

There are a lot of successful treatments for depression, including different types of talk therapy and medication. But sometimes it’s hard to know where to start.

Reach out to a therapist today to schedule a session and learn more about if depression treatment may be helpful for you
Talk to your doctor about whether you are a candidate for medication, as well as the pros and cons of medications

For some of you, it may be helpful to request testing for depression. A depression test may be helpful for those of you who:

You are not sure if you are experiencing depression
You see some of your symptoms here, but don’t think depression is the full picture
You’ve been in treatment for depression, but aren’t seeing the progress you like

Reach out today to start your journey toward healing by scheduling an initial therapy appointment or a depression test.

Ashley Holcomb, PsyD

I help individuals and couples overcome the patterns that keep them from experiencing closeness in relationships.

LEARN ABOUT ASHLEY

Anxiety, Testing and Assessment

Should I worry about my anxiety? How to know when stress is more than just stress, and what to do about it

Written by Here Counseling

Anxiety can be overwhelming. Though we all feel stress, anxiety disorders can cause a person to become agitated, restless, or excessively worried over something others may see as small. Anxiety can come in many forms, whether it’s

Feeling your heart pound and palms sweat
Negative self-talk
Avoiding social situations
Difficulty sleeping and calming down
Racing thoughts and difficulty concentrating

You may not know whether what you are feeling is typical stress, or signs of an anxiety disorder, and that feeling of not knowing brings its own discomfort and additional stress.

When we don’t know, we google.

And when we google, we can find that there are many types of anxiety, as well as other disorders in which anxiety plays a part. If you weren’t feeling anxious before, you may feel even more anxious as you flip through online pages of diagnosis after diagnosis. There are some online anxiety tests, and they can be helpful as a starting place to help learn more about anxiety, and to see whether it may be helpful for you to seek professional help. However, online tests have limits.

You’re probably feeling more anxious than normal when you read through a list of symptoms or diagnoses, and that may impact how you answer the questions. Secondly, sometimes the way things are written is not clear. For example, these quiz questions often ask about how often a symptom occurs without providing context – how often is “often” or “sometimes”? Lastly, even if an online quiz can tell you with 100% certainty that you have an anxiety disorder, it may not be able to link you to treatment with a quality mental health professional, nor provide treatment recommendations that are tailored to best fit you.

Pros of Taking an Online Anxiety Test

Learn basic information about anxiety.
Get a starting point to understand your own emotions
First easy step toward deeper self understanding
Free, or low cost.

Cons of Taking an Online Anxiety Test

Possible misdiagnosis
General, often not validated (accurate) questions
Not able to recommend appropriate treatment
Difficulty understanding results
Incomplete, limited results or insights

Knowing yourself is a key part of understanding how to take care of yourself, but figuring yourself out can be a complicated and uncomfortable process. I’ll explain a few ways to get started on your own, as well as ways we can help.

Take an anxiety quiz or read an article online

Though they have their limits, those online anxiety tests can help us start to learn the lingo around anxiety and start to get some ideas about ourselves. There’s a lot of them out there, so I would begin with any that come from any reputable clinics or universities. For example, here’s a page from Mayo Clinic on common signs of anxiety, or an article from Harvard on the difference between stress and anxiety. In terms of quizzes, this quiz from Mindspot gets around the “how often” problem by providing more concrete terms, which may help you be more exact about your symptoms. I also like this one from ADDitude, which provides more detail about what each of these symptoms means.

Start a Journal

Often our thoughts and feelings happen so fast that we have a hard time organizing them. Journaling is a great way to slow down our minds and put our complex thoughts, feelings, and patterns out on to paper. It doesn’t have to follow a standard format. For some people, just simple bullet points with their thoughts and feelings about a situation can be helpful to start to see patterns. Find a format that works for you and work to integrate it into your regular routine. This can also help you see if your anxiety tends to happen in any kind of pattern, as well as help you answer those pesky “often” and “sometimes” questions with more accuracy. When you write, reflect by asking yourself:

When did I start feeling this way?
What events today contributed to how I’m feeling now?
What feelings do these words communicate?
How much do these feelings affect my well-being, on a scale from 1-10?

Consider psychological testing

At Here Counseling, we provide quality psychological testing that can help you better understand what makes you tick. Psychological testing is a professional service that uses empirically validated measures to draw conclusions about your emotions and behaviors.

Our professionals will explore with you your concerns about anxiety, design a set of tests tailored to your needs, and provide personalized and concrete recommendations to help you with your anxiety. These tests can provide so much more than a quick online quiz, as we conduct a thorough interview to see patterns in your anxiety or in your history, look at other personality traits that may contribute to anxiety or be sources of strength to help you combat anxiety, and check for any other concerns that could be linked to anxiety. Let’s understand how psychological testing works.

Initial interview. A psychologist will ask you about the questions you want answered about yourself. These can range from questions about a specific diagnosis, such as ADHD or Bipolar II, to questions about your personality and relationship patterns.
Testing. You’ll come back in for a few hours of testing in which the psychologist will help you complete hand-picked, curated measures that together create a cohesive picture of your functioning.
Report writing. The psychologist writes a report with significant findings from the measures and draws conclusions in order to clearly shed light on the testing question.
Feedback session. The psychologist will sit down and explain the results of the test, and also recommend next steps for accommodation or treatment.

Having a professional working with you to give you accurate and helpful information has the potential to transform your life and move you closer toward your goals. It takes the pressure off of you to figure out the problem, so that you can take the right steps forward toward healing, health, and wholeness. Reach out today, we’re here to help.

Ashley Holcomb

Ashley provides psychotherapy and testing in our downtown Los Angeles office.