Summary of depression posts

I've been keeping an eye out on my blog statistics, and one of my posts on depression is getting quite a bit of interest in the last few weeks.

This post simply summarises the main depression posts I've put up, here together for handy reference.

Stress and depression tests (March 14)

http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/stress-and-depression-tests.html
In this post I report the Generalised Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) questionnaire and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) tests after encountering them at my referral to the local psychology unit. The post includes links to both and a summary of how scores are interpreted.

The depression paper! (September 11)

http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/depression.html
This post is where I first found the paper describing the prevalence of depression in people with HSP from Estonia. I then use this paper in 2015 as a comparison with my own results.

Stress and mood management course notes (April 2014)

http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/stress-and-mood-management.html
This post is a precis of my notes from the stress and mood management course I went on. The course introduced cognitive behavioural therapy, descriptions of the normal cycles of stress/anxiety and low mood/depression, and various tricks to help break out of those cycles, rules for living, communication, and problem solving.

Assessing your own depression (January 16) 

http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/depression-and-assessing-yourself.html
This post was written after a conversation with a friend who had been suffering from depression and described an alternative approach to assessing yourself than the two questionnaires from the 2014 post. This self assessment considers well-being and aligns it with depression. You score yourself on how well you are living within your own values.

Presentation at the 2013 AGM

http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/agm-looking-after-yourself-liz-redmond.html
At the 2013 UK AGM Liz Redmond gave a talk called "Looking After Yourself" which covered low mood, another term for depression. The talk gave various techniques to help look after your mental health. (On a similar theme, see also;

• the Sportability talk by David Heard from the 2014 AGM http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/agm-sportability-david-heard.html, and 
• the "living with the enemy" talk by Robin Pajmans at the 2017 AGM http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/agm2017-living-with-enemy-robin-paijmans.html)

Part of my 2015 survey: 

http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/2015-survey-results.html
In my 2015 survey I asked respondents to complete the PHQ-2 questionaire which can be used as a screening tool for depression. Overall 63% of respondents had some symptoms of depression and 37% were without those symptoms. Additionally, the results suggest that around one quarter of people with HSP may require further assessment for depression, particularly for those who are using walking frames all or most of the time to get around. There are further details in the link on my analysis of these results.

A symptom included in my 2013 survey

http://hspjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/hsp-survey-results.html
Depression was one of the symptoms mentioned in my 2013 survey, which showed roughly 1/3 with no depression, 1/3 with mild depression and 1/3 with significant depression.