Do I Have Depression? A Self-Check Based on Clinical Criteria

12 min read · Reviewed against current psychological research

It’s been going on long enough now that you’ve started counting. Weeks, maybe months. You still get up, still answer emails, still say “good, you?” when someone asks. But the things that used to land don’t land. You’re tired in a way sleep doesn’t touch. And at some point last night you typed “am I depressed” into your phone, half wanting a definitive answer and half hoping something would tell you that you’re being dramatic and everyone feels like this.

So here is an honest version of what you were looking for: the actual criteria clinicians use, what each one means in plain language, and where the line sits between a hard stretch and something that needs treating. Not a quiz that spits out a verdict, but a clear look at the same framework a professional would be working from.

What this can and can’t tell you

Let’s be straight about the limits before anything else, because the internet is full of pages that aren’t.

Nothing on this page can diagnose you. Not this article, not a 10-question quiz, not the symptom list you found at 2am. Depression is diagnosed by a qualified professional through a clinical conversation that takes in your history, your circumstances, your physical health, and how long this has been going on. That’s not a legal disclaimer. It’s the actual reason self-assessment falls short: several of the things that mimic depression can only be ruled out by someone who can ask follow-up questions and, sometimes, order a blood test.

What this can do is still useful. It can show you what clinicians are actually looking for, help you describe your experience more precisely when you do talk to someone, and answer the question underneath the question. Not “do I have depression,” but “is this enough to be worth taking seriously?” That one you can answer today.

The two rules that come before the symptom list

Most “signs of depression” lists skip straight to the symptoms. But in the actual diagnostic criteria, two structural rules do a lot of the work, and they’re the reason a symptom list on its own is misleading.

Rule one: duration and persistence. The symptoms need to have been present most of the day, nearly every day, for at least two weeks, and to represent a change from how you normally function (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). A rough four days isn’t it. Feeling flat on Sunday evenings isn’t it. The pattern that matters is heavy, unrelenting, and different from your baseline.

Rule two: at least one gateway symptom. Of the nine symptoms, the first two are special. To meet the criteria, at least one of them has to be present: either depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure. You could have poor sleep, low energy, and trouble concentrating (three symptoms) and still not meet the depression criteria if neither gateway symptom is there. That combination might point somewhere else entirely, which is exactly why the framework has this rule.

Then the count: five or more of the nine, including at least one gateway symptom, over that same two-week period.

The nine symptoms clinicians actually look for

These are the nine criteria for a major depressive episode, in plain language (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). As you read, the question isn’t “have I ever felt this?” It’s “has this been true most of the day, nearly every day, for the last two weeks or more?”

1. Depressed mood most of the day (gateway symptom)

Sad, empty, or hopeless. Note that all three are on the list. Plenty of people expect depression to feel like crying and instead find a flat, colourless nothing. Some people mainly notice irritability. Others only find out from someone else that they’ve seemed low for weeks.

2. Markedly diminished interest or pleasure (gateway symptom)

Clinicians call this anhedonia, and it’s often the more telling of the two. The things that used to give you something (music, food, sex, friends, the hobby you were genuinely into) have gone quiet. Not “I’m too busy to enjoy them.” You do them, and nothing arrives.

3. Significant change in appetite or weight

In either direction, without trying: eating far less because food has lost its point, or eating noticeably more. The formal marker is a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month, but the everyday version is simpler. Your relationship with food has shifted and you didn’t decide to change it.

4. Sleeping too little or too much

Again, both directions count. Lying awake at 4am unable to switch off, or waking far earlier than you mean to, or sleeping ten hours and waking up as though you hadn’t. Sleep disruption is one of the most common features, and one of the easiest to explain away for months.

5. Moving or speaking noticeably slower, or being unable to sit still

The clinical term is psychomotor retardation or agitation, and the key detail is that it has to be observable by other people, not just felt internally. Either everything has slowed (your speech, your movements, the gap before you answer) or you’re restless in a way you can’t settle, pacing, fidgeting, unable to be still.

6. Fatigue or loss of energy

Not ordinary tiredness. This is the kind where a shower feels like a project and replying to one message sits on your list for four days. Rest doesn’t fix it, because it isn’t a sleep debt. It’s the engine running at a fraction of its usual output.

7. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt

This one is worth reading carefully, because it’s not the same as feeling bad about your situation. It’s guilt that’s out of proportion: apologising for existing, replaying old failures, a settled sense of being fundamentally not good enough. Depression tends to convert circumstances into verdicts about you as a person, which is a big part of what makes it so convincing from the inside.

8. Trouble thinking, concentrating, or making decisions

Reading the same paragraph four times. Standing in the kitchen unable to choose what to eat. Work that used to take an hour taking three. Many people arrive at a doctor’s office worried about their memory or their competence, not their mood, and this is the symptom that brought them in.

9. Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide, and why this one isn’t a checkbox

The ninth criterion covers recurrent thoughts of death, thoughts of suicide, or a suicide attempt or plan (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). It belongs on the list, but it does not belong in a tally, and here’s why that matters.

In clinical practice, this item is treated differently from the other eight. On the standard screening questionnaire, any endorsement of this item calls for follow-up regardless of the total score. Someone can score low overall and still need support today. So if this one is true for you, please don’t finish counting the others first. It isn’t a point. It’s a reason to talk to someone now.

It’s also worth knowing that this covers more ground than people expect. You don’t need a plan, or an intention, or to feel certain about anything. Thoughts like I wish I just wasn’t here, or everyone would manage fine without me, or a quiet wish not to wake up, all count. And all deserve support. You are not being dramatic, and you don’t have to be in acute crisis to have earned help.

If any of that is true for you right now: in the US, call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com will find your local line. If you’re in immediate danger, please call your emergency services.

The criterion the checklists leave out

Counting to five isn’t the end of it. Two further conditions have to be met, and they’re the reason a symptom tally on its own can mislead in both directions.

The symptoms have to be causing real interference. Formally, clinically significant distress or impairment in your social life, your work, or other important areas. Not “is this bad enough to complain about,” but is it actually costing you something? Your relationships, your job, your ability to look after yourself.

There’s a trap here worth naming, though. Impairment doesn’t have to be visible. People with high-functioning depression keep the job, hit the deadlines, and answer “fine” convincingly, while everything underneath costs three times what it should. Still counts. Holding it together is not evidence that nothing’s wrong. It’s often just expensive.

And it can’t be better explained by something else. The episode shouldn’t be attributable to a substance, a medication, or another medical condition. That’s the one part self-assessment cannot do for you, and it’s the single best reason to see a professional rather than settle it alone.

What else it could be

Several things produce a very similar picture, which is why a professional assessment isn’t just box-ticking. A clinician will be weighing possibilities like these:

• A physical cause. Thyroid problems, anaemia, certain vitamin deficiencies, chronic pain, and long-term illness can all produce fatigue, low mood, and poor concentration. Some are straightforward to check and straightforward to treat, but only if someone checks.
• Grief. Grief and depression overlap and can coexist, but they aren’t the same, and the differences are recognisable once you know what to look for. We cover them side by side in grief vs depression.
• Burnout. Exhaustion, detachment, and a sense of ineffectiveness from chronic work stress can look almost identical from the inside, and the two often overlap.
• A history of very high or elevated mood. This one matters more than most people realise. If you’ve had periods of unusually elevated mood, reduced need for sleep, or racing energy, tell whoever assesses you. It can change the whole picture and the right course of action.
• Medication or substance effects. Some medications and substances, including alcohol, can produce or deepen depressive symptoms.

None of this means “it’s probably nothing else.” It means the answer is worth getting right, and getting it right needs someone who can ask you questions back.

About those online “am I depressed” tests

Most of the quizzes you’ll find are versions of one real instrument: the PHQ-9, a nine-item questionnaire whose items map directly onto the nine criteria above. It’s the most widely used depression screener in the world, it’s free, and your doctor may well hand you the same thing.

It’s a good tool, and the numbers behind it are decent. At its standard cutoff, it identifies roughly 88% of people who do have major depression and correctly clears about 88% of those who don’t (Kroenke et al., 2001). Clinicians use it to gauge severity and to track whether treatment is working over time.

What a score cannot do is diagnose you. Confirmation needs a clinical conversation. And that 88% cuts both ways: in a group of people, roughly one in eight results points the wrong direction. A high score doesn’t confirm depression, and a low one doesn’t rule it out, especially if you’re the kind of person who instinctively answers “a little bit” to everything.

The sensible way to treat any score you get: not as a verdict, but as a piece of information to bring with you. “I did the PHQ-9 and scored 14” is a much better opening line at an appointment than “I’ve been feeling a bit off.”

What to do with what you’ve just read

Whatever you counted, the part that matters most is this: you do not need five symptoms to deserve help. The five-of-nine threshold exists so clinicians can make consistent diagnoses. It was never meant as a bar you have to clear before your suffering qualifies. Plenty of people sit below it, feel genuinely awful, and get better with support. “Not quite depressed enough” is not a thing.

Practically, three steps:

• Write it down before you talk to anyone. Which symptoms, how long, what’s changed. Two weeks of rough notes will make an appointment far more useful, and it takes the pressure off having to summarise months of your life on the spot.
• Start with a GP or a therapist. A doctor can look into physical causes; a therapist can assess and start work. Either is a reasonable front door, and our guides on whether it’s time for therapy and how to find the right therapist walk through it.
• Don’t wait for certainty. You don’t have to arrive knowing what’s wrong. “I’ve felt flat for two months and I don’t know why” is a complete and legitimate reason to book.

The takeaway

You came here for a yes or a no, and the honest answer is that this page can’t give you one. But it can give you something more useful than a quiz result. You now know what clinicians look for: five of nine symptoms, at least one of them low mood or lost interest, most of the day nearly every day for two weeks, interfering with your life, and not better explained by something physical. Hold what you’ve been experiencing up against that.

And notice what the framework is really measuring. Not weakness, not whether you’ve earned the label, not whether other people have it worse. Just whether a recognisable pattern is present, and whether it’s costing you. If reading this felt like recognition rather than reassurance, that’s your answer to the only question that actually needs answering today: yes, this is worth talking to someone about.

For the wider symptom picture this question sits inside, our guide to the signs of depression in adults covers what clinicians look for and how those signs present differently from person to person.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.). (Criteria for a major depressive episode: five or more of nine symptoms during the same two-week period, at least one being depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure; symptoms must cause clinically significant distress or impairment and must not be attributable to a substance or another medical condition.)
2. Kroenke K, Spitzer RL, Williams JBW. (2001). The PHQ-9: Validity of a brief depression severity measure. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 16(9), 606–613. (Nine items mapped to the DSM criteria; at the standard cutoff, approximately 88% sensitivity and 88% specificity for major depressive disorder. Validated across primary care and obstetric clinic samples.)
3. Note on screening versus diagnosis: screening instruments such as the PHQ-9 indicate probable depression and the need for further assessment; they do not establish a diagnosis, which requires clinical evaluation. Endorsement of the item covering thoughts of death or suicide warrants clinical follow-up irrespective of the total score.