Dr. Paul Conti

If you're feeling depressed, there's going to be a number of factors.

Let's just think about what those factors might be.

Let's think about something that relate to childhood.

Let's think about something that can relate to traumatic brain injury.

Let's think of something that can relate to the psychology of combat experience and injury.

Let's look at all of this because there's a whole you

there that wants to understand yourself and you don't want to be depressed.

You want to make your life better.

If we looked at it that way, we could still say, okay, this is depression, right?

But we're not trying to give you five numbers of here's your traumatic brain injury associated depressive symptoms.

And here's what's trauma related.

And here's what's not.

And is it major depression?

Is it recurrent?

Is it severe?

Now we're just lost in a jumble of numbers.

What's lost in the jumble of numbers is you.

So you have to go do that for yourself.

And it shouldn't have to be that way because many people will not.

They won't see that, oh, I need to go do something for myself that the helping system isn't doing for me.