The latest post on Karita’s blog , where she talked about having filled in the Goldberg Depression Scale, inspired me to find out exactly where I am vis a vis my depressive symptoms. My guess would have been that I was in a moderate depression, because although I’m not exactly running through fields of corn with fluffy puppies and a smug, fat grin exercising my facial muscles (though I like my face to be fit, which is why I normally wear a frown instead), I feel like I have a certain amount of cope left in me. Serious depression doesn’t have that feature, in my experience. This current state, relative at least to the rest of those over the past three-ish years, is about as close to ‘normal’ or ‘OK’ as it gets.
The first test I took was the same one that Karita had consulted. This is how it’s scored :
54 & up – Severe depression
36 – 53 – Moderate/severe depression
22 – 35 – Mild to moderate depression
18 – 21 – Borderline depression
10 – 17 – Possible mild depression
0 – 9 – No depression likely
I scored 82. 8fucking2!
Alright, then, I thought. That’s just one test. Try some of the other ones, and see if you still get that kind of result.
So, once again I made contact with everybody’s favourite detective, the omnipotent DI Google, this time searching for the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The scoring for it is as follows:
0 – 10 – not depressed
12 – 18 – depressed
20+ – very depressed, take action
I scored 33.
This was not turning out well.
The next test was the Hamilton Depression Scale (HDS). A score of 28 or over indicates severe depression. I scored 43.
Finally, for a laugh I completed the Modified Scale for Suicide Ideation inventory (MSSI). I think it’s important to bear in mind that I am probably at my least suicidal than I have been in years, so the results of this one were especially interesting.
The MSSI is scaled as follows:
0 – 8 – Low Suicidal Ideation
9 – 20 – Mild – Moderate Suicidal Ideation
21+ - Severe Suicidal Ideation
My result was 32.
I know that these scales aren’t always to be considered as 100% accurate, and to that end I am regarding these results with a pinch of salt. However, that the results were so consistent on all of them is possibly telling. Have I lost my conceptions of what suicidal ideation and depression actually are? Am I so normalised to them, so absolutely inured, that I underestimate just how ill I am?
In the spirit of empirical results, I went back and did each test a second time, picking the absolute lowest value possible in each question rather than the statement that is most frequently true. For example, at one point the MSSI asks…:
Over the past day or two, when you have thought about suicide, have they been intense (powerful)? How intense have they been? Weak? Somewhat strong? Moderately strong? Very strong?
…the possible answers to which are as follows:
0. Very weak.
1. Weak.
2. Moderate.
3. Strong.
Over the past few days, I would say that my modal answer to this question would be ’2. Moderate’. However, there have been a few occasions when the strength of the ideation could have been described by the lesser value of ’1. Weak’, so instead of the picking the most frequent description in my second round at the test, I chose the latter.
The reason for this is that apparently I’m a histrionic, exaggerating freak when it comes to psychological scaling. I therefore felt like I had to prove to myself that my responses were as honest and non-dramatic as possible, but if anything, the answers I gave the second time round felt dishonest, as they aren’t a fair reflection of the frequency or intensity of those very things that they’re supposed to assess. Even so, it seemed the only feasible way of making sure I wasn’t being melodramatic.
My new results were as follows:
Goldberg – 67
BDI – 29
HDS – 29
MSSI – 29
29 must be my unlucky number. So even when I am downplaying my symptoms, I am still considered severely depressed and/or suicidal.
If this is severe depression, what the fuck have my darkest days been? A literal manifestation of hell? A delusion? I’m not under some impression that I’m doing well at the minute, but I really would never have supposed that clinically speaking, things are as serious as they are. This makes me question the very nature of major depression: what even is it? I know what it feels like – or, according to all these testwankthings, I don’t, but you know what I mean – but I can’t quantify it well in words. My first reaction is the word ‘black’, which is certainly accurate, but a small word compared to the magnitude of the actual condition. I described it on my other blog as a “crippling treacle of blackness”, a quote that someone apparently viewed as “poetic”, which was a welcome compliment. I’m not sure I’d use that term myself, but it does serve as very brief description of such levels of depression.
In my experience the worst forms of depression are when suicide is about as unlikely as it’s ever going to be. Although you wish that you were not, you just don’t care enough about anyone or anything to have the motivation to hit your own ‘off’ switch. Perhaps that’s one over-riding characteristic of this state; complete and utter apathy. It’s inherently narcissistic too, but I don’t mean that in an offensive way; you are utterly consumed by yourself, but only because depression forces you to be. It’s full of hatred, mainly for the self. It’s irrational, it’s bleak, and it’s so, so lonely. In the unlikely event that a severely depressed person were in a room full of people, he or she would still be utterly alone.
Is it possible to just ‘get used’ to being severely clinically depressed? I know that it can certainly be done for certain types of physical pain, but I also know that I’d rather experience a lot of physical pain before I experience the bleakest days of depression. So how can you just not react to it being there? Being miserable every day is my norm, but it seems ridiculous to think that one can take a stoic attitude towards it. It just seems completely inconsistent with the reality of the illness.
What does depression mean to you? How do you demarcate between levels of it?
To topically diverge completely, I have good news. The Social Security Agency have finally paid me the oodles of lovely cash that they owed me ! I mean, they were completely full of shit when they told me, when I lodged my original complaint, that I’d be paid within a week; it was nearly three weeks later. But at least it’s there now, and fuck am I relieved. Not as jump-up-and-down-and-open-the-Champagne excited as you might expect when I’ve just found almost £2,000 in my bank account (probably as a lot of it will go on bloody bills), but I’m glad to finally have the matter sorted.
I took a deep breath and phoned the fuckers yet again on Friday. After 700 parsecs of Vivaldi and a string of utter fallacies about how my call was important to the Agency, I finally spoke to a helpful geezer named Alan. He said that the money had been paid on Wednesday, the day after Pamela had phoned them, and that the reason that I then still didn’t have it was because it tokes three days for the bank to process. There was no money on Friday, but on Saturday – hark! ‘Twas there, in all its glory. I was stunned at this because, even though all transactions are surely computationally automated, banks use any excuse to get out of doing their jobs, and the weekend would surely be the perfect opportunity for them to do fuck all.
On the point of Pamela, I told Alan that she had called me and was seeking my dubious company at what would no doubt be a wonderfully helpful and interesting “interview.” I asked him to confirm that I was, indeed, in the ‘support’ group of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
He looked at the records, and then reported that yes, I had been in the ‘support’ group since week 14 of my original claim for ESA (about July 2009, although that was retrospective in that I first had to appeal against their original decision, which I won in June 2010 ).
To that end, I asked Alan why I had been “invited” to a “work focused interview”. He asked me to hold the line whilst he consulted his manager. Though he was, overall, helpful, I couldn’t help but think that I knew more about the fucking benefit than he did.
Anyhow, back he came after a few minutes, sounding rather perplexed. He said that he and his boss had no idea why Pamela wanted to see me, stating that I was correct in my understanding that her “interviews” are not a requirement whilst in the support group. He asked was I certain that she knew my group allocation.
I relaid a redacted version of my conversation with her. “I did tell her that I’d won the appeal about my original placement in the work group,” I told him. “So she cannot fail to know the present circumstances.”
I could almost hear the cogs of his brain whirring on the other end of the phone, as he searched for possible reasons for her behaviour. Eventually, he simply said, “all I can suggest is that you ring her back and make sure she knows that you’re in the support group, and that attendance is not required.”
My mother rang me about an hour later, and I reported Alan’s advice to her. She said that she would ring Pamela and get back to me. She rang back about five minutes later; Pamela only works to 2.30pm so had gone for the weekend, but Mum did manage to briefly converse briefly with another member of staff, who confirmed that support group claimants are not required to attend this shite. The woman said she’d pass a message to Pamela and get her to ring my ma back on Monday.
I am cautiously hopeful that maybe this bollocks can be avoided after all.
***Beware of sex abuse triggers***
Last night after a few pints and half a bottle of wine, I admitted something big and dark to A. Well, in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big and dark – but in my life, it is. I was once (I think it was merely once) penetrated (or ‘raped’, if you prefer) with some sort of pole thing – my adult self supposes that it was the end of a brush or mop or something, but the child couldn’t figure out its use in this world. I don’t suppose it matters, at the end of the day. And it was just an inanimate thing, so I suppose I shouldn’t really care. But I do care, unfortunately; perhaps it’s because the inanimate, non-living thing seemed to me to be a reflection of how Paedo viewed me. A useless piece of crap that serves only one purpose in this sorry world. The whole sordid business seems even more degrading than actually being fucked by him – I mean, he had to put some effort into fucking me, an indication of giving a shit on some level. Or something. A pole doesn’t possess any such considerations.
Anyway, I don’t know why I wrote that paragraph, because it isn’t true. None of my allegations of sexual abuse are true, and I am nothing but an evil Münchhausen-esque, attention-seeking liar of epic proportions. I know that Paul and, when I see her later in the month, NewVCB, will respectively say that “denial is easier than facing the ‘truth’,” and that I am in another “delusional psychosis”, but what do they know? They didn’t bear witness to my childhood.
It disgusts me that I have sucked people into this little web. What kind of vile human being creates such a saga, especially when it inevitably has an impact on other lives? Why have I done this? What an evil, twisted bitch I am. There are no words strong enough to articulate what a repugnant human being I am.
I’m sorry.
—
(I’ve just read over this and find it interesting that I’ve ended on such a hideously depressing note, when I was earlier stating that I was surprised to find that I am “severely” depressed. Ah well. Its just more of those defining, idiosyncratic contradictions).
The latest post on Karita’s blog , where she talked about having filled in the Goldberg Depression Scale, inspired me to find out exactly where I am vis a vis my depressive symptoms. My guess would have been that I was in a moderate depression, because although I’m not exactly running through fields of corn with fluffy puppies and a smug, fat grin exercising my facial muscles (though I like my face to be fit, which is why I normally wear a frown instead), I feel like I have a certain amount of cope left in me. Serious depression doesn’t have that feature, in my experience. This current state, relative at least to the rest of those over the past three-ish years, is about as close to ‘normal’ or ‘OK’ as it gets.
The first test I took was the same one that Karita had consulted. This is how it’s scored :
I scored 82. 8fucking2!
Alright, then, I thought. That’s just one test. Try some of the other ones, and see if you still get that kind of result.
So, once again I made contact with everybody’s favourite detective, the omnipotent DI Google, this time searching for the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The scoring for it is as follows:
I scored 33.
This was not turning out well.
The next test was the Hamilton Depression Scale (HDS). A score of 28 or over indicates severe depression. I scored 43.
Finally, for a laugh I completed the Modified Scale for Suicide Ideation inventory (MSSI). I think it’s important to bear in mind that I am probably at my least suicidal than I have been in years, so the results of this one were especially interesting.
The MSSI is scaled as follows:
My result was 32.
I know that these scales aren’t always to be considered as 100% accurate, and to that end I am regarding these results with a pinch of salt. However, that the results were so consistent on all of them is possibly telling. Have I lost my conceptions of what suicidal ideation and depression actually are? Am I so normalised to them, so absolutely inured, that I underestimate just how ill I am?
In the spirit of empirical results, I went back and did each test a second time, picking the absolute lowest value possible in each question rather than the statement that is most frequently true. For example, at one point the MSSI asks…:
…the possible answers to which are as follows:
Over the past few days, I would say that my modal answer to this question would be ’2. Moderate’. However, there have been a few occasions when the strength of the ideation could have been described by the lesser value of ’1. Weak’, so instead of the picking the most frequent description in my second round at the test, I chose the latter.
The reason for this is that apparently I’m a histrionic, exaggerating freak when it comes to psychological scaling. I therefore felt like I had to prove to myself that my responses were as honest and non-dramatic as possible, but if anything, the answers I gave the second time round felt dishonest, as they aren’t a fair reflection of the frequency or intensity of those very things that they’re supposed to assess. Even so, it seemed the only feasible way of making sure I wasn’t being melodramatic.
My new results were as follows:
29 must be my unlucky number. So even when I am downplaying my symptoms, I am still considered severely depressed and/or suicidal.
If this is severe depression, what the fuck have my darkest days been? A literal manifestation of hell? A delusion? I’m not under some impression that I’m doing well at the minute, but I really would never have supposed that clinically speaking, things are as serious as they are. This makes me question the very nature of major depression: what even is it? I know what it feels like – or, according to all these testwankthings, I don’t, but you know what I mean – but I can’t quantify it well in words. My first reaction is the word ‘black’, which is certainly accurate, but a small word compared to the magnitude of the actual condition. I described it on my other blog as a “crippling treacle of blackness”, a quote that someone apparently viewed as “poetic”, which was a welcome compliment. I’m not sure I’d use that term myself, but it does serve as very brief description of such levels of depression.
In my experience the worst forms of depression are when suicide is about as unlikely as it’s ever going to be. Although you wish that you were not, you just don’t care enough about anyone or anything to have the motivation to hit your own ‘off’ switch. Perhaps that’s one over-riding characteristic of this state; complete and utter apathy. It’s inherently narcissistic too, but I don’t mean that in an offensive way; you are utterly consumed by yourself, but only because depression forces you to be. It’s full of hatred, mainly for the self. It’s irrational, it’s bleak, and it’s so, so lonely. In the unlikely event that a severely depressed person were in a room full of people, he or she would still be utterly alone.
Is it possible to just ‘get used’ to being severely clinically depressed? I know that it can certainly be done for certain types of physical pain, but I also know that I’d rather experience a lot of physical pain before I experience the bleakest days of depression. So how can you just not react to it being there? Being miserable every day is my norm, but it seems ridiculous to think that one can take a stoic attitude towards it. It just seems completely inconsistent with the reality of the illness.
What does depression mean to you? How do you demarcate between levels of it?
To topically diverge completely, I have good news. The Social Security Agency have finally paid me the oodles of lovely cash that they owed me ! I mean, they were completely full of shit when they told me, when I lodged my original complaint, that I’d be paid within a week; it was nearly three weeks later. But at least it’s there now, and fuck am I relieved. Not as jump-up-and-down-and-open-the-Champagne excited as you might expect when I’ve just found almost £2,000 in my bank account (probably as a lot of it will go on bloody bills), but I’m glad to finally have the matter sorted.
I took a deep breath and phoned the fuckers yet again on Friday. After 700 parsecs of Vivaldi and a string of utter fallacies about how my call was important to the Agency, I finally spoke to a helpful geezer named Alan. He said that the money had been paid on Wednesday, the day after Pamela had phoned them, and that the reason that I then still didn’t have it was because it tokes three days for the bank to process. There was no money on Friday, but on Saturday – hark! ‘Twas there, in all its glory. I was stunned at this because, even though all transactions are surely computationally automated, banks use any excuse to get out of doing their jobs, and the weekend would surely be the perfect opportunity for them to do fuck all.
On the point of Pamela, I told Alan that she had called me and was seeking my dubious company at what would no doubt be a wonderfully helpful and interesting “interview.” I asked him to confirm that I was, indeed, in the ‘support’ group of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
He looked at the records, and then reported that yes, I had been in the ‘support’ group since week 14 of my original claim for ESA (about July 2009, although that was retrospective in that I first had to appeal against their original decision, which I won in June 2010 ).
To that end, I asked Alan why I had been “invited” to a “work focused interview”. He asked me to hold the line whilst he consulted his manager. Though he was, overall, helpful, I couldn’t help but think that I knew more about the fucking benefit than he did.
Anyhow, back he came after a few minutes, sounding rather perplexed. He said that he and his boss had no idea why Pamela wanted to see me, stating that I was correct in my understanding that her “interviews” are not a requirement whilst in the support group. He asked was I certain that she knew my group allocation.
I relaid a redacted version of my conversation with her. “I did tell her that I’d won the appeal about my original placement in the work group,” I told him. “So she cannot fail to know the present circumstances.”
I could almost hear the cogs of his brain whirring on the other end of the phone, as he searched for possible reasons for her behaviour. Eventually, he simply said, “all I can suggest is that you ring her back and make sure she knows that you’re in the support group, and that attendance is not required.”
My mother rang me about an hour later, and I reported Alan’s advice to her. She said that she would ring Pamela and get back to me. She rang back about five minutes later; Pamela only works to 2.30pm so had gone for the weekend, but Mum did manage to briefly converse briefly with another member of staff, who confirmed that support group claimants are not required to attend this shite. The woman said she’d pass a message to Pamela and get her to ring my ma back on Monday.
I am cautiously hopeful that maybe this bollocks can be avoided after all.
***Beware of sex abuse triggers***
Last night after a few pints and half a bottle of wine, I admitted something big and dark to A. Well, in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big and dark – but in my life, it is. I was once (I think it was merely once) penetrated (or ‘raped’, if you prefer) with some sort of pole thing – my adult self supposes that it was the end of a brush or mop or something, but the child couldn’t figure out its use in this world. I don’t suppose it matters, at the end of the day. And it was just an inanimate thing, so I suppose I shouldn’t really care. But I do care, unfortunately; perhaps it’s because the inanimate, non-living thing seemed to me to be a reflection of how Paedo viewed me. A useless piece of crap that serves only one purpose in this sorry world. The whole sordid business seems even more degrading than actually being fucked by him – I mean, he had to put some effort into fucking me, an indication of giving a shit on some level. Or something. A pole doesn’t possess any such considerations.
Anyway, I don’t know why I wrote that paragraph, because it isn’t true. None of my allegations of sexual abuse are true, and I am nothing but an evil Münchhausen-esque, attention-seeking liar of epic proportions. I know that Paul and, when I see her later in the month, NewVCB, will respectively say that “denial is easier than facing the ‘truth’,” and that I am in another “delusional psychosis”, but what do they know? They didn’t bear witness to my childhood.
It disgusts me that I have sucked people into this little web. What kind of vile human being creates such a saga, especially when it inevitably has an impact on other lives? Why have I done this? What an evil, twisted bitch I am. There are no words strong enough to articulate what a repugnant human being I am.
I’m sorry.
—
(I’ve just read over this and find it interesting that I’ve ended on such a hideously depressing note, when I was earlier stating that I was surprised to find that I am “severely” depressed. Ah well. Its just more of those defining, idiosyncratic contradictions).