Self-Assessment Depression Tests Online
Depression is a broad term applied to cover a range of symptoms that are indicative of an unusually low interest in life activities and lack of motivation. Depression tests are designed for the purpose of identifying the presence and/or degree of severity of depression in people affected with this mood disorder.
Most of the depression tests consist of a list of short questions which the patient must answer in order to allow an assessment of his/her mood over a period of time. These questions are centered on the main them of ‘how the patient feels?' Online depression tests are free to take and they are also confidential so as to protect the personal privacy of the individual taking the test.
Depression Screening Tests
The most frequently used depression tests for making a preliminary assessment of a person's mood over time are the depression screening tests. These tests ask a set of simple questions, each about how often a symptom of depression is experienced by the subject.
The number of questions varies from test to test, usually falling in between 10 to 20 questions with four or five options of which only one is to be selected. The tests specify the time period over which the symptoms are experienced by the subject and the patient has to bear that in mind while answering each question.
Beck Depression Inventory
The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is an assessment program of 21 questions designed by Aaron T. Beck to identify the presence (or absence) of symptoms of depression in adolescents and adult people. Each question has four options for answer and the subject has to choose one of them.
The questions are designed to find not only emotional symptoms (sadness, guilt, helplessness, worthlessness etc) but also physical symptoms of depression (fatigue, appetite, sleep etc). The latter has also been criticized by some health professionals on the grounds of the possibility of wrongly identifying the presence of depression. However, BDI has been found as highly reliable in most cases.
Goldberg Depression Questionnaire
Goldberg Depression Test is named after psychiatrist Ivan K. Goldberg who developed it for assessing the presence of depressive symptoms as well as for showing the doctor how the subject's symptoms of depression have changed/improved from one visit to the next. The test has a total of 18 questions, each one with six options for answering. The answers are arranged in the order of frequency of the occurrence of a symptom, ranging from absent to very frequently occurring.
Other Online Depression Tests
In addition to these tests, other depression tests are also available online for self-assessment of depression. The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) is particularly designed for elderly people. A number of other mental health websites offer free online screening tests for measuring depression of the subject.
In any case, it is important to note that these depression tests do not substitute the personal examination and further clinical testing for accurate diagnosis of depression. They only provide a reliable answer to whether or not the subject should see a mental health professional about his experience of the symptoms.
