My therapist said that as long as I am high functioning, I don't have a disorder

I don't think that not knowing if you're depressed necessarily means your not...

Long before I got dx'd with schizoaffective/bipolar, I deal with a severe episode of major depression.



So I think it's common to not be sure if what one is experiencing is whatever they are asking. I still experience depression and am sometimes not sure that I'm depressed or not until it gets really bad. And then when I'm experiencing manic or psychosis symptoms I tend to not realize in the beginning stages, and I may ask my therapist or doctor what they think, because sometimes mental illness can affect awareness of self and behavior, insight, etc.They tend to be able to clarify what they see in me.


Also wanted to add in reply to the original poster, being high functioning doesn't mean you don't have a mental illness. Many people are high functioning and have mental illnesses. I consider myself fairly high functioning (going to college part time) yet it doesn't mean I don't have the diagnosis I have. I have good days and bad days with symptoms.

yes, the it is "just me" is what kept me in denial of my depression for a long time.

I had a similar experience. I went to see a possible new therapist and told them my dysfunctional life story. He said that he could not help me because, despite my past, I was not a sex addict, drug addict or alcoholic. I was stunned because I had no friends, was not interested in a love live and was depressed to just name a few of my issues.

The therapist was also turned off by me because I had previously had other therapists and had tried different types of therapy but had not made any progress.

Many years later, I am still haunted by being turned down for those reasons and just thinking about it makes me more depressed and feel more hopeless. I have concluded that therapists who say such things are not good therapists because they are not aware of the further damage their statement has made.

That sounds like a TERRIBLE T!

Something relevant and important is rarely talked about by those in this profession. Any given diagnosis by a mental health work has a good chance of being completely wrong.

Less than 15% of the time did highly-trained psychiatrists agree on a diagnosis of major depression!

So please take the diagnosis as a reflection of this and not about your degree of impairment. Some of this disagreement, I believe, is due to gap between researchers and practicing clinicians which seems to be common in many fields and leads to harm to those needing treatment and huge waste of resources. This is why I shake my head when people write in an ask about symptoms and get canned answers "only a mental health professional can diagnose you". It is a ridiculous statement given the context.

Given all this, the rational thing to do is self-research. Ok, well I have become very jaded and very skeptical about any research these days having worked on all sides. My own conclusion is that self-diagnosis can be much more accurate. Outside of my long-term therapists, I think I can more accurately diagnose myself than most mental health people. Overall that's why I stress the importance of learning all you can and coming up with your own conclusions, if possible. By the time I found this out, it was too late. Had I taught myself earlier instead of listening to those who are supposed to be experts, I could have shaped a better outcome for myself.

I hope this helps.

More here:

I don't see it as a question of right or wrong diagnosis. Most of the nonsensical "disorders" in the DSM are simply not valid conceptually.

I think just the process of submitting your thoughts, feelings, tendencies to someone who presumes ability to decide whether you are normal or not... that is poison in itself, and fundamentally a charade. It's also incredibly invasive. Even if the therapist does not apply a diagnosis but gives various pronouncements about your mental fitness, they are still dangerous and overreaching. The more they refrain from these things, the better in my view.

"Over the last 40 years as a dissident therapist and activist, I’ve known many people who were so negatively impacted by their subjective experience of receiving and indefinitely enduring a psychiatric diagnosis that I’ve come to see such dehumanizing labeling as the infliction of what amounts to a medical curse." -- Michael Cornwall, PhD

I see several different issues and questions that are getting jumbled up here:

Does your therapist have an accurate understanding of depression as a diagnosis and as an experience? I would say DEFINITELY not. Her description of people with depression as "seeing everything in a negative light" is incredibly stupid and simplistic.

Can someone be depressed and still be "high functioning," have strong relationships, be successful at work, etc.? Absolutely.

Are you depressed/do you have depression? No one here can answer that.

Is depression useful as a diagnostic construct in the first place? Are any psychiatric diagnoses useful or meaningful? I would say yes, they can be, though they can also be used in unhelpful and damaging ways. The DSM categories and criteria shouldn't be treated like divine law, but I do think that diagnoses can be useful frameworks for understanding certain experiences and patterns in oneself and others. But nothing should be classified as a disorder if it's not causing suffering and pain in some way, and a diagnosis is only meaningful if it's useful in some way--in suggesting treatment options or ways to adapt, or as a mechanism for self-understanding.