Online screening is one of the quickest and easiest ways to determine whether you are experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition. Mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety, are real, common and treatable. And it is important to remember that recovery is possible!

How does it work?

Completing a Mental Health Screening online is a great way to keep tabs on your mental health. It can help give you a sense of what’s going on.

It can be hard to wrap your head around what’s going on with your own mental health. There are so many different mental health conditions, each with their own symptoms, causes, and treatments. Many people experience more than one mental health condition at once. Our mental health can get better or worse over time. And to be honest, we can be pretty bad at understanding what’s going on in our own minds.

This is where mental health screening comes in. Online mental health screening is great for identifying what kinds of mental health challenges you’re facing—which helps you figure out what next steps to take.

Identifying What's Going On

Are you just sad, or are you depressed? When you can’t sit still, is that because you’re anxious or do you have ADHD? These are different problems with different solutions.

Our mental health screenings are scientifically validated screening tools. That means that researchers have proven that they do a good job of showing who might have a mental health condition and who probably doesn’t. Most of our mental health screenings will either give you a “positive” result (yes, you probably have X) or a “negative” one (no, you probably don’t have X). Some of them give you a bit more detail. (Do you have mild depression or severe depression?)

But all of them also give you a number score. A lot of research goes into how we translate those scores into a result (5-9 is “mild depression” and 10-14 is “moderate”). For simplicity, all you need to remember is that a higher number means more severe symptoms.

Still, to get “officially” diagnosed with a mental health condition, you’ll need to have a conversation with a mental health professional. They can pick up on things that simply don’t come through in an online test. Family doctors can often diagnose common conditions like depression and anxiety. But if you can, try to find someone who specializes in mental health, like a therapist or a psychiatrist. If you screen positive on any of the mental health screenings, STEP UP for Mental Health will contact you to help connect you with a mental health care provider.

What Mental Health Screenings Can Do and Cannot Do

The mental health screenings available on our website are the same ones used in doctor’s offices and counseling centers around the world. Researchers have studied these questions rigorously and found that they provide a pretty accurate picture of your mental health.

But if you look closely at the results, you’ll see lots of statements like “your results indicate that you may be experiencing signs of severe depression.” Why can’t we just say “you have severe depression” and be done with it? Diagnosing mental health conditions is complicated. There’s no “depression virus” we can do a blood test for. Mental health isn’t really black and white—everyone feels sad or anxious some of the time. The line between sadness and depression can feel very fuzzy.

On top of that, there’s a lot of overlap between mental health conditions. Sometimes what looks like depression is actually a medical problem, like a slow thyroid. Many people first get diagnosed with one condition, but later find out they actually had something else all along. It’s also possible to have more than one mental health condition at once.

When a mental health professional diagnoses someone with depression, they usually have more to go off of than answers to a few multiple-choice questions. They might notice that you move slowly and that your posture is slumped. Maybe you have bags under your eyes from not sleeping. If you meet with your therapist regularly, they can also notice changes over time—like when your voice isn’t quite as expressive as it usually is. These are often indicators of depression—but they are also the kinds of things that an online test can’t detect.

Mental health professionals can also ask you more open-ended questions, and they can provide clarification if you’re not sure how to answer. To ensure you receive the diagnosis and treatment needed for recovery, STEP UP for Mental Health will contact you to connect you with a mental health care provider if you screen positive on any of the mental health screenings.

A Word of Warning

It’s easy to try and “diagnose yourself” by reading WebMD and lurking in social media communities. For example, many people nowadays are falling into “ADHD TikTok”, where people describe the lesser-known quirks of ADHD. If you find yourself identifying with what people are saying in these videos, you might have ADHD. But you can’t know for sure just from watching videos. Like online mental health tests, videos and blogs are a good starting point, but not the be-all-end-all. It is best to connect with a mental health care provider to determine an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan. If you screen positive on any of the mental health screenings, STEP UP for Mental Health will  connect you with a mental health care provider to give you a full assessment and talk to you about options for how to feel better.