Depressed? Your GP will tell you apparently

You know how sometimes you are just sitting there reading the paper and you read something that makes you sigh, well i had one of those this morning reading last Sunday’s Observer (the only way I can get through the pile of Sunday papers I take is to eke them out through the week).It was just one line that caused the sigh – just one line, in Annalisa Barbieri’s Agony Column in response to a woman who was describing how she wasn’t dealing well with getting older: she had lost interest in her hobbies and generally thought she was heading for a freefall. After her articulate explanation of her plight – Annalisa’s first comment was “Your GP will be able to tell you if you are depressed”.
Now it might just be me but that sentence itself I found depressing – as if depression could only be diagnosed by the GP and that the GP would be the expert on this woman’s feelings. I dare say that if I went to my GP tonight and said “I have lost all interest in my hobbies and I feel like I am going into freefall” he too may be left with no other diagnosis than “you are depressed”.
I’d like to think that an enlightened GP would ask this woman the following questions instead:
“What are your best hopes from this visit?”
“Have you ever been through a difficult patch before where you lost your enthusiasm for your life?”
“How did you deal with it?”
“What would be a move-on for you, in any small way, towards recovering your zest and interest?”
“What would be the benefits physically and emotionally?”
Just these questions alone might allow this woman an opportunity to reflect and possibly map out a small step towards regaining any enthusiasm for her life.
Its not rocket-science: curiosity about a person’s past strengths and experiences of resilience and a curiosity about the future can trigger a different perspective.  The truth is that we will all probably “hit the wall” or “lose our mojo’s” as it were, at some point – I just hope that when my turn comes, my GP is curious about how I have overcome distress and disappointment in my past and that he is curious about my unique personal resources and goals for recovery.
Eileen