Free Depression Self-Check

Take the check

Four questions, covering low mood and anxiety over the past two weeks. Answer for how the fortnight really went, not how you feel it ought to have gone. There’s nobody here you need to reassure.

What your score means

The PHQ-4 scores four items from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day), for a total out of 12. It also splits into two subscores out of 6 — one for anxiety, one for low mood — which is often the more useful half of the result.

Low mood, sadness, and depression aren’t the same thing

Sadness has something attached to it. Something happened, you feel it, it shifts. Low mood is flatter and attached to nothing in particular. Things that should land just don’t. Depression, clinically, is a lasting version of that with other things alongside it: sleep and appetite change, interest drains away, concentrating gets hard, your body feels heavy, and there’s often a running commentary about yourself you’d never accept from anyone else.

No questionnaire can tell you which of those you have. What it can tell you is whether the last two weeks were heavier than you’ve been letting on. That’s worth knowing.

Why the two-week window matters

The PHQ-4 asks about a fortnight, not your life. Mood moves. Take it the week after a result, a breakup or a bad run at work and it’s measuring that week, which is exactly what it’s for. A snapshot of load. Not a description of you, and not a label you’re stuck with now.

If you’re unsure, take it again in a fortnight and see whether the picture holds. A pattern tells you far more than one result ever will.

What actually helps

None of this replaces support, but all of it’s worth doing while you decide:

• Move first, feel like it later. Low mood takes motivation before it takes energy, so waiting until you feel like doing something means waiting a very long time. Doing the small thing badly lifts mood more than resting does.
• Protect sleep, but don’t over-sleep. Both too little and much too much make low mood worse. A consistent wake time does more than a consistent bedtime.
• Get outside early. Twenty minutes of morning light is one of the few free interventions with a real effect on mood and sleep timing.
• Keep one social contact you can’t cancel. Withdrawal is the mechanism by which low mood maintains itself; one fixed commitment interrupts it.
• Catch the commentary. Low mood is very good at dressing up harsh opinions as plain observations. Write one down, read it back a day later, and it usually gives itself away.

When self-help isn’t enough

All of that works reasonably well while you can still get some distance from how you feel. It works less well once the flatness has run for weeks, once you’re pulling out of things you used to manage without thinking, or once you’ve started treating yourself as the problem instead of someone who has one.

That’s the stage where talking to someone qualified stops being an overreaction and starts being the quicker route. Not because you’re broken. Because low mood is very hard to see straight from the inside.

Talking to someone about it

A session is a private 1:1 conversation with Sachin Bajaj, who has an M.Sc in Clinical Psychology from Gurugram University and a PGDGC from Jamia Millia Islamia. It’s ₹499 for 45 minutes, and ₹249 for your first with the code FIRST50.

Nothing goes to your parents, school, college or employer. A first name is enough to book. For most people that turns out to matter more than the price.

Frequently asked questions