Summary

Look at how you or other people walk. Then going a bit meta.

Disclaimer

This post is probably not high quality enough to deserve to be top level purely on its qualitative merits. However I think the sheer importance of the issue for human well-being makes it so. Please consider importance / potential utility of the whole discussion and not just the post, and not only quality when voting.

The problem

Minor depression is not really an accurately defined, easily recognizable thing. First of all there are people with hard, boring or otherwise unsatisfactory life who are unhappy about it, how can one tell this normal, justifiable unhappiness from minor depression? Especially that therapists often say having good reasons to be depressed still counts as one, so at that point you don't really know whether to focus on fixing your mind or fixing your life. Then a lot of things that don't even register as direct sadness or unhappiness are considered part of or related to depression, such as lethargy/low energy/low motivation, irritability/aggressiveness, eating disorders, and so on. How could you tell if you are just a bad tempered lazy glutton or depressed? And finally, don't cultural expectations play a role, such as how Americans tend to be optimistic and expect a happy, pursue-shiny-things life, while e.g. Finns not really?

Of course there are clinical diagnosis methods, but people will ask a therapist for a diagnosis only when they already suspect something is wrong. They must think "Jolly gee, I really should feel better than I do now, it is not really normal to feel so, better ask a shrink!" But often it is not so. Often it is like "My mind is normal. It is life that sucks." So by what heuristic could you tell whether there is something wrong with yourself or other people?

Basis

This is heuristic I built mainly on observational correlations plus some psychological parallels. Has nothing to do with accepted medical science or experts opinion. My goal isn't as much as to convince you this is a good heuristic, but to open an open-ended discussion, asking you if it seems to be a good one, and also trigger a discussion where you propose other methods.

How I think non-depressed men walk

"Having a spring in the step." This old saying is IMHO surprisingly apt. I like this drawing - NOT because I think depression is based on T levels, but I...

RichAdam

RichAdam

RichAdam

RichAdam