Science

I'll add my perspective as a male recovering from depression:

• A questionnaire asking about sadness would have missed me. My emotions didn't take the detour over sadness on their way to not caring anymore.
• Asking me about hopelessness would also have missed me outside of my deepest downs.
• While, in retrospect, I did become more easily irritated by people (especially when asked to do something when trying to wind down), asking people around me about acting out would have missed me, as I generally like my fellow humans and have a desire to please and respect for people teaching me something, so expressing that irritation would have been rather rare. It also would have been short lived as I'm quick to forgive.

The best ways to have discovered my depression earlier would have been to

• ask me about feeling overwhelmed by all I felt I needed to do
• note how long and often I needed downtime
• note how I increasingly failed to do things I needed to do in time or at all
• ask me about feeling like I'm wasting my potential and/or disappointing people around me
• ask me if I thought I was lazy despite not wanting to be
• maybe ask me about being more easily irritated rhan I used to be

Because this wasn't caught, I spent years with undiagnosed depression. Years in which unhealthy coping mechanisms had time to entrench themselves. It was only caught because suicidal thoughts scared me so much that I sought help when they appeared a second time.