My Fourth Principle for Recovery: Getting the Right Help, Part 2

In my last post, I introduced my fourth principle for recovery: With the right help, you can live a happy and fulfilling life. For most depressed people, getting the right help begins with testing. I talked about standard testing for depression in the last post. If your depression is bad enough, you may need testing for more specific types. At my mother and sister’s suggestion, I got tested for clinical depression. At the time, I don’t think the standard tests I’ve read about would have caught it in my case, so I’m glad I took their advice.

Getting Tested for Clinical Depression Was Different

If you are considering getting tested for clinical depression, I can tell you a few things you probably won’t find online. I won’t give away too much. Part of the effectiveness of the testing comes from going in fresh. But in many ways it was not what I expected.

It Was Not Talk Therapy or Psycho-Therapy

It did not involve talking about my emotions or childhood. It did not involve my history, or how I’ve been feeling the last few weeks, or trying to determine if there’s a particular reason for depression, or if it is just always there regardless of any reason. Someone observing would not have thought it had anything to do with depression. The psychologist (I say psychologist, but I don’t know exactly what his title was) gave me various tasks to do and questions to answer. After each task, he asked why I did it that way or why I concluded what I did.

The only thing I recognized as “psychiatric” was the Rorschach inkblot test. You’ve probably seen it on TV. They show an inkblot, and you tell them what it looks like. On TV, they usually say a bat or a rabbit or something simple. My answers were much more elaborate. In fact afterwards, I asked if I could get copies of them, because I thought I saw scenes that could be used in a fantasy or sci-fi story. Turns out they are copyrighted, a trade secret, or something like that. In other words, they’re not available to the public.

It Takes More Time

With the standard question-and-answer tests I’ve seen, I can’t imagine them taking long. That kind of testing was made for something more general. It is one step in a process for your doctor to determine if you need treatment for depression or something else. The test I took was to…