How Do I Know If I Am Experiencing Depression?


We all experience times when our mood is low and we do not feel motivated to engage in tasks and activities. Might that mean that we are experiencing depression? Does this mean that you should seek online therapy for depression? There are many reasons why you might consider seeking treatment with an online therapist for depression. 

Let’s start by understanding the symptoms that you are experiencing. It is important to consider whether these symptoms of low mood are impacting your daily functioning and quality of life. When our mood is low and we are experiencing depression, it can impact our ability to experience pleasure in activities, enjoyment within our relationships or at work (or school), and we can find that we have a very low amount of motivation to do most things we usually do.

In order for a proper diagnosis to be made, it is essential to make an appointment with a healthcare professional with training in assessment and diagnosis. Psychological diagnoses are provided by physicians and psychologists. This can be very helpful before you begin any type of depression treatment online. 

If you begin depression treatment online, you will begin to learn more about your symptoms and important information about depression and the role of avoidance. You will learn about why this might have occurred and how your behaviours and low mood are being maintained. It is important to better understand the impact of low mood so you can start to use evidence-based tools and strategies to help navigate your mood and change in functioning. You will find that learning these techniques with a professional clinician during online therapy for depression is often very impactful. 

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Depression, or, Major Depressive Disorder, is important to be able to recognize and understand. You want to be able to understand how this might be different from having a day during which you might feel “blah” or unmotivated. 

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According to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR), there are many different types of what we call depressive disorders. These include major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder and several others. The feature that is common to all of them is how the individual will report feeling sad, empty or irritable. Furthermore, individuals will experience changes as a result of this low mood that will impact how well the person is able to function on a daily basis. Differences between the depressive disorder presentations are mostly regarding the duration of low mood, timing or possible causes. 

Major Depressive Disorder is considered to be a classic presentation within this category of mental health disorders in the DSM-5-TR. Common symptoms seen over at least a two-week period when experiencing this may include:

  • Low mood experienced all day, every day, for at least 2 weeks (in children and adolescents, this can present as irritable mood)
  • Extremely decreased interest or pleasure in almost all activities that an individual typically enjoys most of the day nearly every day for at least 2 weeks
  • Decreased or increased appetite; significant weight loss or gain when not intentional 
  • Difficulty sleeping (i.e., falling asleep or staying asleep)
  • Moving more slowly than usual or increased fidgetiness/agitation as observed by others 
  • Extreme tiredness or loss of energy most days
  • Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt experienced most days
  • Difficulty concentrating or feelings of indecisiveness 
  • Recurrent thoughts of death

Note: When an individual is experiencing recurrent thoughts of death that may be accompanied by thoughts or plans of suicidality, it is best to proceed to the nearest emergency room to ensure that the individual is fully assessed and kept safe by a healthcare professional. 

At Forward Thinking Psychological Services®, we have many well-trained healthcare professionals who are skilled in working with individuals with depression and conducting online therapy for depression. We encourage you to reach out so we can better understand your symptoms and work together to ensure you are on the path to recovery. 

Should I get Online Therapy for Depression?

If you are experiencing symptoms of depression that are interfering in your life and impacting your relationships, it might be time to start looking into online treatment for depression. Online depression therapy is important to consider for many reasons. 

We know that online therapy sessions are effective and can provide us with many benefits as opposed to attending therapy in person. These may include:

  • Increased convenience due to the elimination of commuting time and the need to take time off from work
  • Enhanced accessibility for individuals who have difficulty with mobility
  • Enhanced access to best-fit therapists given decreased concerns about geographical barriers to assessment services and intervention
  • Ability to engage in daily activity schedules within the comfort of one’s home environment and brainstorm about activities they like to do
  • Ability to engage family members or partners within the home who play a role in supporting you and might find they are lacking skills and knowledge when it comes to your symptoms of anxiety

Online therapy for depression and anxiety using CBT strategies has been found to be effective for individuals, and this allows us to feel confident when providing this service to you. At Forward Thinking Psychological Services®, we provide CBT strategies during online treatment for depression and anxiety; contact us to learn more!

Overall, online therapy for depression does allow you many options in terms of being able to work with different therapists. Individuals within more rural communities often appreciate the fact that they are not bound by a limited number of therapists who might live within their region. Although you might think that depression treatment online should be possible anywhere in Canada, it does depend on where clinicians are licensed to deliver services. 

At Forward Thinking Psychological Services®, our clinicians are able to provide services throughout different parts of Canada, including Ontario, Nova Scotia, British Columbia and New Brunswick. 

At Forward Thinking Psychological Services®, we have an experienced team of mental health clinicians who are able to work with you on your symptoms of depression. We also have clinicians who work directly with adolescents and teens and can engage in online treatment for depression with them. 

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What Happens During Online Treatment for Depression?

You might be wondering what you would be doing should you engage in depression therapy online. What will I be doing with my therapist?

There are a variety of therapies for symptoms of depression. When looking for an online therapist for depression, you want to ensure that the assessment they conduct and interventions they use are evidence-based. This means that research has been done to support this treatment. You should feel comfortable asking about this as well as what their training and experience have been. At FTPS, we only provide online therapy for depression that has been found to be effective. Many of our clinicians will use CBT as part of their online depression therapy offerings. In addition, they will incorporate other evidence-based interventions such as acceptance and commitment therapy and DBT-informed approaches. 

Let’s focus on behavioural activation and CBT strategies that are often used during online treatment for depression. By engaging in depression treatment online, you will learn a lot of skills that you can use on your own, in between sessions. 

These skills will help you to better understand your symptoms of depression, avoidance that might occur and what you can do to try and gain perspective and unhook from difficult thoughts and feelings. 

Here are the types of skills you will learn:

  • Psychoeducation about depression and avoidance
  • The impact of avoidance on your mood short term and long term
  • Connections between thoughts, feelings and behaviours
  • How to face situations, thoughts and physical sensations that you might be avoiding
  • Engaging in daily activity scheduling
  • Recording how activities impact your sense of pleasure, mastery and meaning in life
  • Unhooking from difficult thoughts and feelings and engaging in activities that are values-based and provide you with meaning in your life

During online depression therapy, you will also have the opportunity to do cognitive strategies with your therapist. This can take the form of thought record work. During thought record work, you will learn many skills, including:

  • Raising your awareness when your mood shifts due to unhelpful negative thinking styles and thoughts
  • Understand the emotions that accompany these negative thoughts when you experience significant mood shifts
  • Understanding the types of automatic depressive thoughts that you experience
  • Gaining perspective towards your thoughts by reframing them with evidence that both supports and does not support your anxious thoughts
  • Learning more about your core fears that drive your low mood

Online cognitive behavioural therapy for depression has been found to be effective for youth, teens and adults. If you engage in this type of therapy, you can be confident that you will be receiving an intervention that has been shown to help individuals with depression. 

Following your initial assessment with your online therapist for depression, you will be able to discuss the best way to begin your work together. You might want to start with cognitive therapy work, such as thought record interventions or behavioural activation. These are essential discussions to have with your therapist during depression therapy online. 

Frequently Asked Questions

There are many benefits to engaging in online therapy for depression. Since online treatment for depression has been shown to be effective, you can feel confident when choosing this as an option. There can also be many benefits to working with an online therapist for depression. For example, individuals may prefer online therapy as it offers them the ability to engage in sessions from the comfort of their own home or private office space. This eliminates commuting to and from therapy sessions and can allow for one to fit therapy into busy schedules much more easily.

Individuals are also able to access therapists from a larger geographical area than just within their own neighbourhood. Within Canada, an online therapist for depression would often work with a provincial region (or more should they be registered in different provinces). This can allow more choices for online treatment for depression. Overall, these benefits can be tremendously helpful when engaging in therapy.

People might wonder how they will find working with an online therapist for depression and anxiety, and what might be the differences between online anxiety counselling and that which is conducted in-person.

Over time, people have experienced more similarities than differences when working with a therapist in an online environment. For example, anxiety counselling online and therapy for depression has been found to be as effective as in-person support. Therefore, the environment is not impacting the change that may occur. People will also are able to experience strong therapeutic relationships and experience therapy as a safe space for change.

Different types of therapy are just as effective online as they are in-person. For example, online cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety has been found to be effective when conducted online. Individuals are able to learn helpful skills and strategies to navigate unhelpful thinking styles that can lead to effective behaviour change for symptoms of mood and anxiety.

Individuals can certainly receive online treatment for depression and anxiety together. When someone is seeking this out, it is important to find a therapist who has experience in providing anxiety counseling online and treatment for depression.

When meeting with your therapist, it is important to ask them about their experiences within both of these areas. Your therapist can share with you how they would approach working with the types of symptoms that you are experiencing. For example, an effective treatment used when conducting anxiety therapy online is often cognitive behavioural therapy. This is a treatment approach that has been found to be quite effective for symptoms of both anxiety and depression.

When working with a therapist, cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety online and depression can help an individual understand connections between thoughts, feelings and behaviours. In doing so, people will gain skills and tools to be able to decrease problematic behaviours (such as avoidance), build on strengths and resiliency and reframe difficult thoughts.

Overall, receiving online treatment for depression and anxiety together can be very powerful!

People might wonder at what point is it important to seek treatment for symptoms of depression. It is often essential to consider the impairment that you are experiencing when making this type of decision. Should you meet with an online therapist for depression, you can also discuss diagnosis (if the clinician is a psychologist) and gain a better understanding of the impairments you are experiencing. It can be important to consider how significant your impairment is in terms of social, educational/work and daily activities. When these different areas become impacted, then you will likely benefit from seeking online therapy for depression rather than waiting or hoping that symptoms will resolve on their own.

Depression can be extremely impactful and can result in people not being able to function as they usually do, experience sympoms such as prolonged periods of low mood, loss of interest in pleasure in activites, sleep and appetite difficulties, feelings of guilt and hopelessness and, somtimes, a desire to harm oneself or end their life. Should you be experiencing any of these symptoms, it is critical to speak with your family doctor, call a crisis hotline or present yourself to your closest emergency room.

Although there are similarities between CBT for anxiety online and online therapy for depression, there are also differences. For example, during online CBT for anxiety, you will work with your therapist to understand what is called the CBT model of anxiety. During this psychoeducation, you will learn about how anxiety is uncomfortable but not dangerous and the biological reasons that we experience anxiety. You will also identify the types of physical sensations, thoughts, feelings and behaviours you experience when you are anxious and how they are interconnected.

During online treatment for depression, you will also learn the CBT model of depression. However, you will learn more about the downward spiral of depression and how these symptoms can lead to significant behavioural inactivity, which can further impact mood and sleep. Within both types of CBT approaches, you will also learn connections between thoughts, feelings and behaviours and specific strategies to help with mood-related symptoms or anxiety-related symptoms. These tools and strategies may include behavioural activation, exposure therapy, thought record work, present moment awareness work and cognitive defusion. It is important to work with an online therapist for anxiety and depression who will be able to guide you through treatment interventions that match your presenting concerns.

How Can I Find Depression Treatment Online? 

Does FTPS provide online therapy for depression near me? Yes, we do! We provide it throughout Canada, with an ability to help people who live within Ontario, Nova Scotia, British Columbia and New Brunswick.

We provide depression therapy online for adults, teens, parents, families and couples. 

Please contact us to learn more and get started!

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