Helping a depressed person
If someone you love has depression, you may wonder if there is anything you can do to help. The simple answer is yes. Your support and encouragement can play an important role in a loved one's recovery from depression. Yet taking care of yourself is equally important. The negativity of depression will wear you down if you don't tend to your own needs - and if it does, you won't be in a position to help your friend or family member.
The most important thing anyone can do for the depressed person is to help him or her get an appropriate diagnosis and treatment for depression. This may involve encouraging the individual to stay with treatment until the symptoms of depression begin to abate (several weeks), or to seek different treatment if no improvement occurs.
How Can Family And Friends Help?
The understanding, affection, and involvement of family and friends can play a vital role in assisting a depressed loved one. The following can help:
- Listen carefully, sensitively, and without judgment to the concerns and feelings of the depressed person. Allow and accept expression of feelings.
- Encourage the depressed person to continue to talk about his/her concerns
- Empathize: Genuinely communicate your understanding of the depressed person's concerns as he/she describes them, both in content and feeling.
- Take Seriously any remarks about suicide. A depressed person may experience hopelessness, which may lead to contemplating suicide. Report any remarks about suicide to the depressed person's therapist
- Respect Differences: Assume that different individuals will respond differently to depression. Be flexible and encourage support of one another in different ways.
- Offer Hope: Assist the depressed person to identify available alternatives, but refrain from evaluating, fixing, advising, criticizing, moralizing, correcting, offering glib assurance, or making a decision for the depressed person.
- Become Involved: Encourage a depressed loved one to seek professional help w/ a competent mental health care worker. On occasion, you may need to make an appointment and/or accompany him/her to his/her first appointment. Consider inviting the depressed person for outing, to the movies, for walks, and other physical and social activities.
- Be Available and Follow-Up: Continue to encourage the depressed loved one to stick with treatment and to practice the coping techniques and problem-solving skills he or she is learning through psychotherapy. Remain open to further discussions. Let them know you are available if they need you. Check back on the person's progress.
- Care for Yourself: Living with a depressed person can be very difficult and stressful on family members and friends. The pain of watching a loved one suffer from depression can bring about feelings of helplessness and loss. As you help a depressed loved one, your role is to provide support and to suggest other options when support is not enough. Remember your own limits and do not become more involved than your time and skill permits.
- Consult: If the issues are beyond your ability to help, you can call and talk with a therapist at Counseling and Psychological Services about how you can better help your friend or family member.
