What can I do to get better?

Everybody recovers from depression in their own way. But the first step is to find out how severe your depression is by using the Personal Health Questionnaire (PHQ).

Click here to fill in the PHQ if you’ve not already done so.

The next step is to try to work out why you should feel low just now. This is often surprisingly difficult to understand (but then if it were easy, you probably wouldn’t be reading these pages). The section called What causes depression? might be helpful.

There is no magic formula that works for everyone all of the time. Recovering from depression usually involves one or more of these things:

• Anti-depressants
• Self help
• Talking therapies
• Allowing time to pass (especially if your PHQ is 10 or less)

For more information on each one, you can click on these links, or see the menu at the side.

"People see the difference in me: they see I'm looking happier, but I'm not happy saying it's because I'm on the antidepressants ."