Low Mood Test

What this measures, and what it does not

This is a screening questionnaire about mood. It is not a diagnostic instrument, it cannot tell you whether you have depression, and a high score here is not a diagnosis. Only a qualified clinician can make that assessment.

What it can do is give you a structured description of five dimensions that travel together — mood, interest, the physical side, how you have been talking to yourself, and how much any of it is costing you — and separate them, because they do not always move together and the pattern matters more than the total.

The difference between a difficult period and something that needs attention is rarely how bad it feels. It is duration and interference, which is why both are asked about directly.

Two weeks

The timeframe is not arbitrary and it is worth knowing why.

Feeling low is a normal, appropriate and sometimes useful human response to circumstances. What clinical screens look for is not sadness but persistence: a mood that has been present for most of the day, most days, for at least two weeks, and that does not lift much when things improve.

That last clause does a lot of work. Sadness that responds to events is doing what sadness is for. A mood that has become the weather — that stays low through a good day, a piece of good news, a weekend — is a different thing, and it is the thing this questionnaire is asking about.

The energy scale deserves a separate look

One genuinely useful thing this test can do is flag something that is not a mood problem at all.

Fatigue, disrupted sleep and appetite change have a long list of physical causes — thyroid problems, anaemia, sleep apnoea, vitamin D and B12 deficiency, medication side effects, and others — any of which can produce a profile that looks convincingly like low mood.

If your energy scale is high, a blood test is a reasonable first step, regardless of what the other scales say. It is cheap, fast, and rules in or out a category of explanation that no questionnaire can reach.

About the items

The five facets follow the dimensions the validated screening instruments measure. The statements are written for this test rather than reproduced from a copyrighted scale, which means this questionnaire is not equivalent to a clinical screen and must not be reported as one.

The free run takes the first five statements of each facet, which gives you a real reading on all five rather than a precise reading on two.

If your scores are high

Depression is among the most treatable conditions in medicine. Talking therapies and medication both have substantial evidence behind them, they work for a large majority of people who receive them, and the outcomes are considerably better with help than without.

The most common mistake is waiting — to see if it lifts, to be sure it is bad enough, to avoid taking up somebody’s time. If what you have read here describes you, that is enough reason to make an appointment.

If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, or feel that people would be better off without you, please contact your local emergency services or a crisis line now. This is a website and it cannot help you; a person can.