Medical expert of the article
New publications
Being alone can help you assess the extent of your depression
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
People tend to underestimate or overestimate the severity of their neuropsychiatric symptoms depending on whether they live in a cheerful or depressive environment.
Although depression has long been considered a serious mental disorder that can be treated, it is quite difficult to diagnose it correctly. Here, one must largely rely on the complaints of the patient himself, and it is not always possible to prove their objective nature through analysis. Scientists from the Warwick Institute (England) have found that people with mental disorders assess their own condition depending on the social environment in which they live.
In an article published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, psychologists describe the results of studies in which people with depression or those suffering from obsessive anxiety were asked to assess the severity of their symptoms. It turned out that in this case, a person compares his own condition with the mental health of those around him. And if there are people with a depressive mood around him, then his own condition no longer seems too serious to him. And vice versa: if friends and acquaintances rarely fall into depression, then the slightest depression of mood will be considered by him as a serious sign calling for immediate medical attention.
Researchers note that the assessment of one's condition can be influenced not only by the health of "family and friends", but also by the general understanding, so to speak, of the mental health of the nation. And it can fluctuate quite strongly. For example, 10% of those participating in the study were convinced that half of people are depressed for at least half a month, while the other 10% believed that depression takes away no more than 2 days a month from us. There was a similar spread in the assessment of the "popularity" of obsessive anxiety: here, at one pole, there were 26 anxious days out of 31, at the other - only a week.
The results of the study may explain why such common mental disorders can be so difficult to accurately diagnose. Those who feel that a lousy mood has lingered for too long may be advised to trust their feelings more and not compare themselves to others. In turn, doctors should take into account the “depressive” statistics there, they have to work: knowing the psychological climate in the area as a whole will make it easier to establish a diagnosis in each specific case.
Let us recall that scientists recently presented the latest developments in the fight against depression.