Depression
Low mood that has lasted weeks, loss of interest in things that used to matter, changes in sleep and appetite, difficulty concentrating, and the flatness that is harder to describe than sadness. Treated with medication, therapy, or both.
Anxiety and panic
Worry that does not switch off, physical symptoms with no medical cause behind them, avoidance that has quietly narrowed your life, and panic attacks that feel like a medical emergency while they are happening.
ADHD
Difficulty with attention, organisation and follow-through, in children and in adults who were never assessed. Other causes get ruled out first, which is also what makes the answer worth something.
Bipolar disorder
Episodes of elevated or irritable mood with reduced need for sleep, alternating with depression. It is commonly first treated as depression alone, so past reactions to antidepressants are part of what gets asked about.
Worried it is not serious enough to bring?
People routinely wait years because they assume someone else needs the appointment more. Severity is not the threshold for being seen. If it is affecting your work, your sleep or the people around you, that is enough.
Trauma and PTSD
Intrusive memories, nightmares, hypervigilance and avoidance following a traumatic event. Care here is trauma-informed throughout, which means you decide how much you tell and when. Nobody is required to narrate the worst thing that happened to them in a first appointment.
Psychotic disorders
Hallucinations, delusions and disorganised thinking, including first episodes and long-standing schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.
Substance use
Alcohol and opioid use disorder, treated alongside the depression, anxiety or trauma that is usually underneath. See substance use and recovery.
If none of these quite fit
Plenty of people arrive without a name for it: sleep that has gone wrong, anger that is frightening them, grief that has outlasted what they expected, or a child who is not themselves any more. Book an evaluation. Working out what this is happens to be the thing the first appointment is for.