Fighting back: progress to date

OK, so it's still a little blurry, but easier to read than the first one I uploaded. This is up to and including 1st June 2009, my 38th birthday in case you haven't bought me something shiny and lovely yet.

D'UH!!! I only just realised that if you click on the picture with your mouse, you get an expanded view. And there's me calling myself a blogger (insert "embarrassed" emoticon).

How to interpret (again):

• The most important lines are the thick red one (my average severity of anxiety over time) and the thick blue one (my average severity of depression over time). The colours seem apt since depression is often mistaken for a simple case of "the blues", and my anxiety usually makes me terrified or angry, thus red for rage or 'warning'. The other two lines are really just snapshots of my depression and anxiety severity at a particular moment in time. You can see how affective the disorders make me by the huge fluctuations in both scores from week to week. When I refer to reading this blog being akin to you "riding the roller-coaster with me" then this is exactly what I'm talking about.
• Don't forget that in most graphs, when the lines head upwards it's a good thing. Not in this case. The ideal result is both lines crossing the 'x' axis - which would mean I was cured, at least for the time being. In the case of clinical depression (blue line), the higher it goes, the closer I am to feeling suicidal. With GAD (red line), the higher the line goes, the more likely it is that I will be unable to leave the house unless for food or cigarettes, unable to answer the phone if it rings, unable to answer the door if someone knocks, or experience an anxiety attack for some reason, no matter how innocuous.
• GAD severity is scored on a scale of 1-21 with 21 being the most severe (see (2) above).
• Clinical depression severity is scored on a scale of 1-27, with 27 being the most severe (see (2) above). In hardcore medical terminology a score of 0-5 means depression is not reported. A score of 5-9 means minimal symptoms of depression are reported. 10-14 counts as, "Moderate symptoms of depression reported" and, if on a hard copy questionnaire or a web page, usually comes with the warning, "Seek medical attention". 15-19 is classified as, "Moderately severe symptoms of depression reported" and is usually accompanied with something along the lines of, "Seek medical attention urgently". Finally, anything between 20 and 27 is classified as, "Severe symptoms of depression reported". If you're in the doctor's office and get a score like this, chances are that they won't let you leave without stuffing a crisis line phone number into your hand, or hospitalising you.