I'm a classic bipolar with a 6-week cycle. Life is a roller-coaster even on medications.

BDI over the past six months, Best: 0, Worst, 58. Right this second, 4.

Average time programming depends on my bipolar state and the state of the project and also my volunteer work, but probably close to 40-45 per week. (Plus many hours of meetings and design reviews that are not programming.)

BDI of 32 at the moment, but it sounds as if my results would fluctuate widely depending on mood, weather, time of day, .. it's the weekend now so it's not too bad. I have moderate avoidant personality disorder, for what it's worth, so I'm not too surprised. I suppose that if you asked me over a period of time, the score would vary between, say, 15 and 40, as a ballpark estimate.

Average hours spent programming per week over the last 6 months, I'm not exactly sure but probably 20 or so. It was pretty high between January and March but my studies are taking up a lot of time that I would otherwise use to work on hobby programming projects. I am not employed, so my programming solely consists of university assignments/labs (~ 5-8 hours a week) and hobbyist (~ 10-15 hours a week). But again, it fluctuates wildly. Sometimes I can do absolutely nothing for an entire week and then spend the weekend restlessly coding, if I have a cool idea or something like that.

Score: 2
I answered 0 to everything except question 11, which I answered '2' to.

Alot of the questions are relative, and I feel I've gotten better in alot of areas, not worse - so even while I'm nowhere near perfect, the test in asking if I feel worse than I used to is asking the wrong questions. If the questions were phrased differently, I'd probably score alot worse.
Averaging programming time a week >15.

What a curiously worded quiz, though. The first dozen questions or so are all phrased in the negative, and even if you answer "No", no option is available for absolutes. "I am sad." vs "I do not feel sad" with the implication that even if I don't feel it, I am probably sad anyway?

The test seems to say, "Either you are depressed and suicidal and you know it, or you are depressed and suicidal and you don't know it.". I'll take option 'C': maybe the test creator was depressed and suicidal, and anyone taking the test is biased to answer depressingly, because the test is phrased in such a way as to encourage and motivate the instincts in humans to try to please others - in this case, by answering what the test taker thinks the test giver is wanting/expecting them to answer.

No wonder everyone and their dog is on anti-depressants these days.

Currently BDI - 7

Average Hours: around 20 - 30

It will be interesting to see what there results would be if this is recorded every 2/3 months.

Score: 0

Programming hours: around 50 weekly hours

Guess I lost this one .. hope it helps

Score: 16

Weekly hours over last 6 months: likely <20.

You know what, if you asked me when I was working 10+ hours/day I'm rather sure I would have scored better. I feel very relieved! Considering what I've been through so far I find that quite an accomplishment. FYI, my doctor knows. I rarely apply his advices.

I also think it's flawed. It doesn't differentiate between people who blame themselves for everything or blame the world and anybody else for everything. I'm not a psychologist, but it may be an important difference.

Score: 0

Hours: ~50

Gripes:

1. The test is specifically geared towards finding the result that a person is depressed. That is, for example, on #6 I can only go so far as to say that I think I am not being punished, when in reality my answer should be more like “-4: I think I am being overly rewarded”. The test limits the range of responses like a person limits his or her perception when specifically seeking a result. If you look for signs that a person is depressed, invariably you will find them. It only matters if you don’t ignore everything else.
2. Many (if not all) of these questions are not related to programming. You may as well ask how many hours per week we play piano (the response here would be quite low but if you targeted musical sites with the same questions you would get the same response overall, apparently meaning that piano players are depressed). For #19 (losing weight), for example, there could be any number of factors unrelated to programming. Being on a diet is a perfectly healthy thing, so what if I just happened to lose 15 pounds as a means of staying healthy? And #20 (worried about health more than usual)? Isn’t it normal to worry about your health more as you age? I’m not yet, but I am sure I will be more and more worried later in life. If age is not a factor in this, #20 makes no sense. Someone who worries about his or her health more than in the past is unrelated to depression. Someone who is losing weight might be on the healthy track back to success. Being tired more than usual is a natural sign of aging. Losing appetite and sex drive is a possible sign of physical sickness such as a flu or cold. Thinking you look worse than you used to is a natural sign of aging (although in my case I was 45 kilograms all my life until recently having been able to push it up to ~69 through tons of hard work, and I look better as a non-skeleton, despite not looking as young).
   1. There is just no context for too many of the questions. 10 (crying more than usual): I cried a few days ago, meaning that I cry more than I usually do. Why? Because a coworker just died. You’ve undoubtedly seen her work as she has done art for multiple Final Fantasy games and more. She was extremely talented and just a cool person. She even kept a real sword at her desk and she was a gamer. A moment of silence for ???? (Mari Yamada)…
      I still marked a 0 though. Why? Because I know anything else I marked would be taken out of context. I am mourning a coworker as part of a healthy lifestyle. I am not going to put a 1 there and let it say that I am 1 point closer to depression when it has no context at all and is completely untrue.

I don’t think the test has much merit, but good luck with it.

L. Spiro

BDI: 29
Average hours: 40

(TL;DR at the bottom)

Obviously, many people above think that this test is flawed for many reasons, all valid. I think it is incredibly flawed, as well, and unbalanced in the eyes of the creator of the test; there are too many indicators of depression that are ignored by the questions, especially where being healthy is in the middle of the scale, and the test only measures toward one extreme, not counting the other.

1 is flawed in my opinion. The 2nd degree of sadness says "all of the time"; if there is a moment that I have a smile, I'm disqualified by definition. Additionally, "snapping out of it" isn't an option; my depression is of the notion that my dark world-view is an undeniable fact. Seeing anything else but these ideas would be delusional. "Snapping out of it" is not on my goal list, and I don't acknowledge the idea.

Regarding 2, once again, there is an absolute maximum before the highest degree. For the 2nd degree of hopelessness, it says "I feel I have nothing to look forward to". I have this project that I want to finish; that's something to look forward to. However, I don't look forward to graduating, I don't look forward to working long hours in a dead-end job to pay for a life style that not only do I not want, but I must give up my ability to enjoy it to support it. I don't want to interact with others around me, and I am not looking forward to my inevitable decline from my prime into irrelevancy, and ultimate failure to meet my goals. So, no. I don't have "nothing" to look forward to, but it is a heck of a lot more than simply discouraged. I feel like I'm only moving forward in life to finish this project, and because suicide is dishonorable. This question failed to identify my problem as anything more than a kid undecided about what career he wants to choose.

3 is broken, too. I have a complex where constantly try to over-achieve, and put everyone else below me. As a result, I am harsh and overly critical toward myself. The first degree of feeling like a failure uses the notion of average to gauge how I feel. Since I try my hardest to make sure the average person can only look up at me, I see people that do better than me as exemplary and on a level unattainable. Thus, I am incapable of feeling like I fail more than the average person in most cases. I do, however, feel that I fail an incredible amount of the time, so the choices are on a non-linear scale to me.

6 has me wondering. Do they make the distinction between feeling like you're being punished for all that you did wrong, and feeling that you don't know what you did to deserve some deity's disfavor? I fall under the former.

I feel that 7 has a huge gap between 1 and 2, which would lead to being unable to choose between them. Few things disgust me. However, disappointment is putting it lightly.

Does 8 distinguish between real faults, or imagined ones?

9 is misleading. After I spend the usual hour convincing myself to get out of bed, I contemplate shooting myself in the face. It's gotten so casual that I joke about why I don't, like the weapons I have are too small of a caliber, and dying by a sissy weapon is a disgrace. However, I would not kill myself, because I have work to do. That's it. I have some things that I need to do before I die, and they're pending. If someone could promise me that they'd devote their lives to completing my tasks, I'd be one step closer. Past that, is the question of honor. My name would be meaning less if I tarnished it. If they invented a method of death that wouldn't carry the penalty of being dishonored, I'd be another step closer, like trying to be a hero in something obviously suicidal. I would like to kill myself at times, and I wish I didn't have the shackles that keep me here. At times, it feels like being trapped in a pool of sharks with no ladder.

However, I will not carry them out, and never will in the foreseeable future. I don't think that this last sentiment alone should put me at the lighter end of the spectrum.

10 is kind of skewed due to being male in my culture. Here, the less you cry, the more powerful you seem. I don't cry for anything, including grievous bodily harm, other than sometimes when talking about my past, or when having interactions with others that would call for a tear. To me, being unable to cry is a compliment, though the amount of times that I wish I had a substitute for it are staggering. How should I rate myself?

11 uses the idea of an average as well; I've always been irritable, and it decreases my standard of life. So, I'm both no more irritated than I ever was, but I'm also irritated all the time. What should I choose?

14 has a slight problem: this isn't entirely an opinion question. There _are_ permanent changes in my body that make me look unattractive. I have various scars all over and a couple minor disfigurations that do not align with my culture's concept of being attractive. Perhaps the question should be reworded to include what the audience perceives the cause of the changes to be? There is no debating the fact that there are things that weren't originally there, and will always be there, so this question is not accurate.

21 is also not a viable question as-is. I don't want to be too expressive here, because that isn't fitting for polite conversation, but they don't make the distinction between having interest in fictional scenarios, and having interest in your partners. It's possible for one to be missing and be symptomatic, while the other remains, either due to habit, or compulsion.

TL;DR: So, I feel like my score should be much, much higher, but strictly adhering to the test provides misleading results.

I won't give you an essay like everyone else (though you should read them; some of them are valid criticisms rather than self defense), but I will say that you can't just limit the group taking the survey to "only programmers please," and then say the results apply to programmers. As has been pointed out, none of these have anything to do with programming. For example, a lot of the questions don't account for the fact that some of the participants are 20 - 25, i.e. people going through quarter life crises where they realize that they still don't know exactly what they want to do with their lives, but they want to do something. These people are generally pretty hard on themselves. How would they answer #2? They're probably discouraged about the future at the very least. And #7? Does "I'm disgusted with myself," mean "I'm depressed," or does it mean "I expect more from myself, and I want to change"? What about #8? Wouldn't it be reasonable to blame yourself for your faults? Or at least accept that you're responsible for them anyway, once you reach adulthood?