Helping someone who has depression

My ex-girlfriend suffers from depression and seems to be going through a major depressive phase. She is withdrawing from not just me, but everyone. I’ve never really had to deal with this before, and am not sure what to do. I’ve tried to be there for her, but she really is refusing any help. Does anyone have an experience with dealing with depressed people? How can I help her?

Be supportive, but remember you can’t fix them. You’re not the cause of their depression, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it. Don’t nag, but be honest with them about how their behavior impacts on you. Address their behavior, don’t condemn them. Encourage them to get professional help. Offering to help with some chores can be good, as depressed people often literally cannot get some of the basic fundamentals of living done on their own. But watch that your help doesn’t enable them; that is you don’t want to be doing things for them that they can and should do for themselves.

There’s a nice handful of aphorisms for you. Hope some of them prove useful.

QtM, MD

Thanks, Qadgop the Mercotan. Especially the “You’re not the cause of their depression, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it.” might be important to a friend.

Good luck, Ultraviolet and all the best to your ex gf.

Don’t try to force her to be happy (my experience, anyway). Let her know that you aren’t going anywhere (i.e. cheating on her, going out with friends for a weekend, etc.) unless she lets you know she needs space. However, spending every waking moment trying to touch her or talk to her is probably a bad idea, too.

A therapist, or someone otherwise trained to be able to effectively handle this sort of thing, will be a lot more useful because there are so many different reasons people get depressed and so many different types of people who suffer from it that what helps one person can be equally damaging to someone else.

It’s not going to be easy. People with depression can be black holes sometimes. You may find yourself giving a lot of you and getting nothing back. A lot of dealing with depression is figuring out that you want to get better and that takes time.

The best thing you can do is be there. Call sometimes, even if she never says anything and hangs up two minutes later. Invite her out, even if she never accepts. Gently encourage her to seek help, to be active, to do stuff like write or whatever…but don’t pressure her. The best thing for a depressed person is the simple unjudgmental presense of someone that cares about them.

Quite true. Which is why - dependent of course, on your relationship and her reaction, possibly you could help her get help. She might realize she need professional help but feels helpless to go about it. I say this because I had a recent bout of depression and my mother (what are mother’s for :)) made an appointment for me and drove me over there. I don’t think I could have done as much for myself at that point. It was a big help.

Of course you can’t force her to do anything.

What Betenoir said.

What everyone else said. The only thing I’ll add is that if you do choose to be supportive, please do so to the extent that you actually can. Unfortunately, lip service doesn’t help those in that state very much, except to reinforce their opinion that, despite how bad things are for them, they’re still not worth your time, effort and concern. Like betenoir mentioned, sometimes offering to take them to therapy (perhaps that you arranged or helped to) and sitting in the waiting room shows an incredible stand of solidarity that they need.

It’s really just small things like that which makes a difference. Definitely when you voluntarily choose to shut yourself off from the rest of the world because you don’t want to make their life worse.

Oh, and any declarative statements you can offer might help. I know in my case that they do. For example, someone professing desire to do something for me, if I’d like, will get a “no thanks.” However, if they say; “I’ll be over on Friday to clean up your house.” (etc.) makes me believe that the initiation is on their behalf rather than an obligation due to poor-pitiful-me being unable to function/be normal/be a contributing member of society. You get the picture.

And all this is strictly IMHO, from where I’ve been. I’d be more than happy to correspond with you if you think it might help. My email is in my profile. Of course, my stupid gmail won’t send anything out, but I’m hoping that will be resolved soon.

Best wishes to her and you too.