I found this article to be a great source of information and wanted to pass it along. ExpandedConsciousness writes:

Mental illnesses are not only incredibly hard to diagnose, but they can completely catch the afflicted off guard by developing at random times in one’s life. Someone can be completely symptom free for a good portion of their life, only to develop some form of mental illness in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, etc.

Can you imagine waking up one day to a world that you believe is real, but really isn’t? Many people with mental illness have to question their reality everyday. And there aren’t many ways to test for it; it’s often diagnosed based on self-reported symptoms.

So, as you can imagine, people often get diagnosed with depression, but are really suffering from some other type of disorder altogether. In fact, a study conducted in 2009 found that general practitioners could only correctly identify depression in about 47.3 percent of their cases.

Here are for common disorders that are often mistaken as depression:

Diabetes
People suffering from Type 2 diabetes may believe that they are simply suffering from depression as they can share many of the same symptoms, like loss of weight, irritability, and fatigue. Unfortunately, problems with insulin resistance have been significantly correlated to depression, making it even harder to properly diagnose.

It’s also been found that people with diabetes develop quite a bit of stress in response to their condition. So, instead of their symptoms being caused by depression, it is actually the stress they are suffering from due to their chronic illness that is causing the depression-like symptoms. Bottom line: if you have a chronic illness and are suffering depression-like symptoms, it’s likely the illness that is causing you to ruminate.

Bipolar Disorder
While depression and bipolar disorder both have people suffering from incredibly sad, “low” periods of time in their lives, those with bipolar disorder also ride extreme “highs” in life.

People with bipolar disorder can mistake their condition for depression during their lows, as they feel completely hopeless, worthless and in extreme cases, suicidal. These are often followed up by periods of extreme highs where they’re feeling confident, motivated and happy with their life.

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About the Author

Expanded Consciousness is a website focusing on breaking the chains of systematic thinking and bring about free thinking, compassion, and the expansion of one’s consciousness.