Screening #Life #ooo pretty

Today is National Depression Screening Day, and I took a long lunch break and went and got screened. The results were news to me, but, in retrospect, really not that surprising.

It started out with a questionnaire, printed on 11x17 carbonless paper, so it essentially amounted to two pages of questions. "Name" was not one of them (not surprising, since the screening is free and anonymous), but "age" and "race" were; statistic-gathering, I presume. Then a bunch of "how often do you feel this way" and "check yes or no" questions. Those sorts of questions are always tough to answer definitively, but I muddled through and hoped that my mistakes would mostly cancel each other out. I talked to a counselor afterward, to go over the results and make sure they made sense, and they did. They fit pretty well, actually.

Here's the executive summary:

• Depression: Nope
• Mood disorders (e.g., manic-depression): Nope
• Anxiety: Yes, mild (not enough to call a disorder)
• Post-traumatic stress disorder: N/A
• Attention-deficit disorder: Ooo pretty

What was most amusing was that they weren't even testing for ADD. The counselor picked up on it from my questionnaire, and asked me more questions about it. Then he got out the DSM-IV — the official diagnostic guide. I said yes (or sometimes just nodded ruefully) to six of the nine questions, and said "sorta, 50/50" to two others. And six is the official threshold for an official diagnosis. So there ya go. (I can assure you that nobody who knows me will be surprised.)

"We are Homer of Borg. You will be assim — mmm, donuts."