[Denchius]

Hello,

I am experiencing severe depression. 90% of the time I am feeling down, worthless, empty, sad and that I no longer am interested in continuing my life. I have never attempted suicide but I did think about it, I kind of feel like: if my life does not bring me anything but pain and sadness what is the point? For example, before, I could never understand why anyone would attempt suicide but now this thought does not seem that crazy anymore. On top of that, I have something that I think is OCD. While I do not have any repetitive behaviors, I do have these intrusive, very negative thoughts that kick in out of nowhere. They usually have to do with negative experiences in my life and every-time these thoughts kick in I relive them as if it just happened, they just do not seem to fade away under no circumstance. I can never concentrate in class or do something productive because I am always caught up in this state. I do not know whether it is ADD or just caused by depression. This has led to me failing my university as well as worsening relationships with my friends and family. These thoughts are so intense that I can feel some physical sensations in my brain, as if it is tickling. It makes me want to “open up my skull and scratch my brain” or pull my hair out if that makes any sense. Also, when these thoughts come, I feel very anxious and restless and can’t sleep/relax. Sometimes, I also feel disconnected from the world or as if “I am in a video game”. I could just be staring at some object with absolutely nothing going on in my head, my life just does not feel “real”, I feel as if I am trapped behind a glass wall or something. I would like to note that I do not deliberately try to concentrate on all these negative things to get attention or something like that. I actually try to be happy and engage in life, hoping that all this will just somehow pass but eventually I always end up in the same condition. I almost got used to living like this but for the past 2 weeks I have been crying almost every day for no reason, literally just feeling this severe sadness and emptiness in my chest and crying. I decided to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist next week because this has been happening to me for at least three years and I literally cannot take this anymore. My questions are : is there a way to check my brain and hormones? Maybe some sort of blood analysis/ endocrine system analysis or maybe some sort of scans for brain activity? I would like to know what is causing all of this and have some physical evidence like test results. I am sure that I qualify for depression according to the symptoms and questions that the psychiatrist asks. (And I have taken many different online tests and quizzes which all show the same results. However, I would like to conduct ALL the physical tests possible to be sure that it is caused by some sort of imbalance of hormones or something else in my brain. Could you please specify what they are? Thank you very much.

Welcome to the site and the board. Not sure I will be much help. My diagnosis came from observation and questions. There weren't medical tests. It was all my behavior and thoughts.

I took several surveys conducted by persons in the psychiatric healthcare field. Ultimately, it was a team of psychiatrists that made the diagnosis.

I definitely am not a proponent of self-diagnosis tools. In my opinion they are at best tools that may be indicators of mental health issues but should never be used by a layperson for diagnosis purposes. Rather, you are best to seek the help of a professional.

To my knowledge there is not a physical test (ie. blood work) that will diagnose a mental illness.

Mind you, Switzerland has always been at the height of knowledge and practices within mental healthcare services. There may be practices there 'light years' ahead of what is routine in the rest of the western world. Would I be correct to assume too that access to these services is more readily available?