Dr. Judith Joseph

Well, if people are experiencing symptoms, but they don't meet a criteria that probably doesn't apply to everyone these days, because a lot has happened, a lot has changed in the world.

If they don't meet this criteria for something that was classified 30 years ago, then are we just gonna leave them alone?

Sometimes we have to let our patients lead us and to use the language that they identify with.

So if your patient is saying that you're having symptoms of depression, that you're not enjoying things, but you're still performing, but you're still delivering,

But you're having these symptoms.

Are we just going to wait for them to stop functioning, for them to be broken to do something about it?

And that's why I thought that that term was so powerful because it shakes to the core what we believe, what we think depression looks like.

But we're missing people who don't meet criteria, but we could be helping them before it gets to a crisis, before they stop functioning.

And I'm passionate about this work because, frankly, I was that person who was running a lab, taking care of employees, taking care of a small child at home, married to a frontline worker, seeing the world fall apart, having to help people.

There was no way that I could stop.

I had to keep going.

So I pushed through the pain.

I suffered from high-functioning depression.

And I knew that I had to do something about this.

And that's why I started studying it.

So there was a scale that I was using in my research studies.

It was the SHAP scale.

I believe, I think it's actually developed by someone who's British, but it's an old scale and there are items on there that I was using in my lab.

But I found that some of the scales on there were a bit antiquated.

Like US, many people don't drink tea, but tea shows up on that scale.