Can you self diagnose depression?

[Kardan]

Wait, are you saying you can't self diagnose anything? You literally can say that somethings wrong with you when it's not. It's called hypochondria. Google isn't a doctor, and in this day and age it's making people very paranoid and even hypochondrial in some cases.

I'm not saying that OP is overreacting here, and it's quite common to self diagnose with depression, but it seriously doesn't mean they're right. I could say I have cataracts because my vision is a bit blurry... that's diagnosing myself isn't it? It's not right, medically, but I am diagnosing myself. Mis-diagnosing is still diagnosing.

Not really.

"the art or act of identifying a disease from its signs and symptoms"

The whole point of a diagnosis is that you've identified the disease, not guessed.

[lawrawrrr]

Not really.

"the art or act of identifying a disease from its signs and symptoms"

The whole point of a diagnosis is that you've identified the disease, not guessed.

But just because you have the symptoms doesn't mean you have one particular thing (especially relevant with common symptoms such as cold-like symptoms, or relating to the topic, feeling 'sad' or 'blue', it's not always depression) - you can misdiagnose (even doctors do it) a disease/virus/infection with similar symptoms, it's not a random guess at all. Doctors can't even be 100% sure on diagnoses - I think when people Google symptoms and assume they've got something, it's right even less often than when actual qualified doctors do it!

[FlyingJesus]

Pretty sure doctors can be 100% since it's their job to be, and medicating or otherwise treating a misdiagnosis can endanger their patients and cost them their jobs. They also know a hell of a lot more than Joe Average on the internet concerning all the possibilities and you're insulting the entire medical profession by suggesting that misdiagnosis is a major occurrence in a doctor's day

[e5]

If you can self-diagnose it, surely you could help yourself to overcome it by doing some research? Sounds like you have a mild form of it though, and if you think you should be on anti-depressants, go see a doctor, although as you said, some of it could be down to puberty although I think it's more common in girls to feel more depressed as their hormones seem to react alot worse than males (LOL sorry, just from experience )

[Kardan]

But just because you have the symptoms doesn't mean you have one particular thing (especially relevant with common symptoms such as cold-like symptoms, or relating to the topic, feeling 'sad' or 'blue', it's not always depression) - you can misdiagnose (even doctors do it) a disease/virus/infection with similar symptoms, it's not a random guess at all. Doctors can't even be 100% sure on diagnoses - I think when people Google symptoms and assume they've got something, it's right even less often than when actual qualified doctors do it!

But it's not a diagnosis...

[Absently]

a lot of people tend to throw the term depressed around so loosely as soon as they get upset about anything (not saying you are or anything!)
like the others said, go see a doctor if it's that bad, you need to see a professional that can help you. if you're worried about taking tablets for it generally you can goto therapy instead.

[Jazz]

Most people have said the go to the GP thing so I won't repeat them, one point I have to say is that you don't get put on medication if you go to see the GP. You have to be assessed beforehand by a child psychiatrist and usually you will have speech therapy or CBT before medication even comes into play.

Another route you can go through is your school, all schools have a CAF report system (or similar) as a part of their duty of care. Your head of year will fill this form out on the information you provide them and they send it off to CAMHS (Childrens mental health team, dunno if its called camhs all over the uk). They tend to ask you about your school, social and home life and its worth finding out if you have a family history of mental illness because that will probably come up.

Everyone gets depressed, its a natural thing. I think when it consumes your day to day living it becomes a problem and you need to talk to someone before it gets too bad to handle. You can't diagnose yourself, but what worked for me was sitting down and thinking what you're mainly getting upset over (your trigger, everyone has one) and trying to address it either by talking to someone or whatever feels right for you

Sorry if that's long winded, can't really shorten it much more haha. If you need any info or someone to chat to, just PM me or something.
PS: this isn't like a segment from a web article, its what I went through getting help (so it might be a little different where you are, but won't be that much difference I wouldn't have thought)