Tips For Helping Someone Deal With Depression
Watching someone else struggle with depression is arguably worse than dealing with it yourself. All you want to do is help them, make them feel better, and no matter what you do they’re still out of it.
It’s awful — I’ve watched my wife suffer with me, and it definitely seems she has a harder time of it than I do. I know what’s going on, how I feel, why I feel that way. She doesn’t. She just has to put up with me, and I can see the frustration in her eyes; that right there hurts as much, if not more, than the depression itself.
Here’s some things I’ve learned over time that help out in my situation. They may or may not work for you; hopefully they will, or at least they’ll serve as a starting point. But everyone’s different, every depression is different — hell, even each of my own low points is different from the last. I want to make it clear (again) that I’m not a mental health professional of any kind, so take these with a grain of salt.
1) Acceptance is Key
That sounds a little cheesy, but it’s true. Accept that the person has depression — whether you want to call it an illness, a disease, a problem, whatever. Accept that they aren’t just “sad” or “whiny.” Depression comes and goes, depending on the individual and the situations they’re in, so sometimes it’s hard to remember that they have it, especially when one day they’re “normal”, joking around and having a great time, and the next they can’t even get themselves out of bed.
Along with this, don’t expect them to just “snap out of it.” You might be able to help them out of it, but for the most part they need to pull themselves up and it’s a long haul.
And, by the way, telling them to just “be happy,” or “snap out of it,” or anything along those lines is a really bad idea. It’ll make things worse, because they can’t. It’ll make them feel bad, make them feel like there’s something wrong with them. It’ll probably piss them off too, especially if you tell them that quite often. Best thing is to just let them be (well, to some extent).
2) Get Involved
As much as they’ll let you, at least. Some people don’t like a lot of help, and you’ll come off seeming nosy, pushy, etc. But if they’re seeing a therapist (which they probably should, if at all possible) or a psychiatrist, offer to go with them to the sessions, offer to help them as much as possible. Being open about it, letting them know you’re there for them, can be a big help in it’s own right, even if they never come to you.
3) Don’t Judge
It’s probably the hardest thing to do, but it’s also probably the most important thing you can do. Let them talk openly about anything that’s on their mind, and try to empathize with them. When you’re in your down spots, the smallest thing can be a full-blown crisis. As embarrassing as it is to admit it, I’ve gone into near-crisis mode because someone used the wrong “tone” in an email. It’s stupid, but that’s just how it is.
So, let them talk and keep in mind that they’re seeing things from an extremely pessimistic point of view. No matter how petty you think what ever they’re upset about is, let them get it out of their system, and don’t try to make them “see” how small and insignificant their problems are. Wait until they’re doing better, when they can think a little more rationally.
4) Make Sure They Get Help
This is a really touchy subject, because we unfortunately live in a time where seeing a shrink or a therapist is generally frowned upon. But it’s really important that they see someone if at all possible. I know perfectly well that finances don’t always allow it, but you do what you can with what you got.
Don’t give up, either, and make sure they don’t give up. Finding a good therapist can take time, and it can be really frustrating. Same with shrinks and meds — especially medication. It generally takes about two to four weeks (don’t quote me on that, and it depends on the meds, too) for medication to really get taken up by the body and for it’s affects to be noticed. During that time, it seems as though they may as well be taking sugar pills. Anti-depressants and other psycho-active medications are not like Tylenol, where you take it and twenty minutes later your headache is gone. If you and your loved one go in to the process thinking that, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
On top of that, psycho-active medication is pretty much a crap shoot. There isn’t some kind of test they can run and say “Oh, this level is too low, we’ll give you this pill at this dose.” The first drugs may have no affect, or they may be too strong. So they’ll change the dose, or switch, and then it’s another couple of weeks to see if that one works. It’s annoying, but when you find the “right” medication, it’s worth it.
5) Dealing With Suicidal Thoughts
Suicide is a really, really touchy subject. The catch-all solution here is take it damned seriously. Talk with their therapist about it. You don’t need to call the cops every time the subject comes up, but drop what you’re doing and pay attention to everything they say.
That said, and to totally contradict myself, it doesn’t always have to be taken dead seriously (pun intended). Before anyone out there starts getting up in arms about that, hear me out.
Thoughts of suicide can be, and often are, very comforting. To the “normal”, healthy mind, that probably sounds pretty off-base (well, remember — we’re dealing with people who are a little off-base). I deal with suicidal thoughts on a daily basis. For me, at least, it’s a security blanket. It’s a way of saying, “You know, if it gets really bad, I can just get out.” It’s an exit strategy, albeit a poor one.
Am I going to off myself? No. At least, I don’t expect myself to. But if you’ve ever had a job you hate — whether you constantly hate it or just at certain times — you’ll know how nice it is if you feel you can just move on to something else, and how miserable it is to think that there’s no other jobs out there for you. Same thing with suicidal thoughts (in my case, at least): it’s relaxing to know I have a way out. So I think about it, and I research it, much like a “normal” person would research different jobs in their field and daydream about telling their boss off one last time.
Now, please don’t think I’m saying suicidal thoughts are a good thing; they aren’t. But just thinking about it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is actually going to go through with it. You’ll need to talk to their therapist, and to them, and find out what exactly the cause of the thoughts are and just how seriously you should take it. Again, it’s on a person-by-person basis, and just because I’m not going to do anything about it doesn’t mean your loved one won’t.
6) Take Time for Yourself
This is probably the most important item on the list. As I’ve said a couple of times, dealing with someone who’s going through depression is harder than facing it yourself. It’ll take a lot out of you, and eventually stress you out to the point you’ll do more harm than good.
Take a break.
Go for a walk by yourself, play video games, listen to music, read a book. Do whatever it is that you do, but do it by yourself so you can recharge a little. Granted, use a little common sense too — if they’re curled up in the fetal position, crying their eyes out because something went wrong, it’s probably not a good idea to go smell the roses. But when you get a chance, take it. As big of a responsibility as it is to help someone with depression, you need to be there for them when they need you; you can’t do that if you’re running on fumes, emotionally speaking.
Like I said above, and I’m going to say again, I’m not any kind of professional in this field. Take all of this with a grain — or a pound — of salt. If something looks like a good idea, give it a whirl; if not, well, don’t even consider it. Hopefully it helps, and good luck.
Catch you on the flip side.
–Matt
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c43464b7-d8f4-4b61-902f-08f4b03b3720)
Struggling With Depression
I’ve posted about this before on Chocolate For Dogs — look up “In The Fight” if you want, but if not, it’s no big deal; things are (as always) a little different now. In fact, that’s why I’m posting it again, because things are different. There’s a different audience here on this site, people who may not know me as the guy who ran Chocolate for Dogs, so we have a bit of catching up to do.
For those of you who don’t know, I suffer from depression. I don’t mean I get a little sad every once in a while; I mean all-out, curl up in bed with the covers over you, not wanting to go on with anything (even — somedays especially — life in general). Clinical, hard core take-meds-and-see-a-therapist type stuff. It’s not fun — hell, by definition, it’s not fun — but it’s a part of my life. You deserve to know about it.
A lot of what went into Like Glass is based on it (although highly fictionalized — I’ve never had a **blink** that I can remember….), and, when you get a chance to read it, Shattered is based very heavily on a lot of what I’ve gone through in the past year.
I’m completely open to discussing it, if anyone has any questions about it. I don’t know what you’d be curious about, so I’ll try to explain what it’s like to the best of my abilities. I’m sure I’ll fall short, but that’s life, eh?
Everyone’s been sad; that’s a given. If not, well, send me some of whatever you’re taking 
You’ve gotten your heart broken, you’ve had someone close to you die, something’s set you off at some point or another. It’s terrible, but life goes on, right?
Now, take that sadness, that grief, and imagine going through that every day, for months. Yeah, you “snap out of it” every once in a while (a brief interjection: don’t ever tell someone who’s depressed to just “snap out of it”; they can’t, and you’ll just make things worse. I’ll probably talk more about that some other time if there’s any interest), there’s days where you’re able to smile and joke around like everything’s normal. But you always end up coming back to that same, deep sadness.
Let’s take it one more step, and remove that initial cause. No one died. No one left you. There’s nothing that’s really “wrong,” per se, but you’re still incredibly sad. Now, see, the brain — well, my brain, at least — doesn’t really work that way. It feels there needs to be a “reason” to be sad, so it’ll make shit up. It’ll take the slightest thing, no matter how minute, and stretch it out into a crises. Your boss didn’t give you the right amount of praise on the job you did? You must be worthless. Your wife (or husband) was in a bad mood — must be your fault, something you did or didn’t do.
That’s pretty bad, right? Wait, there’s more!
After so long of putting up with it, you get tired. And I mean physically tired, emotionally tired, mentally tired. Your brain stops working, your body stops working, you stop caring about anything. Of course, this just makes everything worse. You start pissing people off, falling down on the job, ignoring the little things that you normally do to make people appreciate you (whether you know it or not). So then your life really starts to go downhill, and it really is your fault this time.
That’s when you start getting bad thoughts. I mean bad stuff. Stuff like suicide. Because it never stops. Someone who’s really struggling with depression looks at it like it is a terminal illness, because no matter how you try to reason with them, they’re so used to everything going “wrong” (either in reality or their imagination), that they just cannot see it ever getting better.
And when you get to that point, you just want everything to stop. You want the bad stuff to stop. You want the good stuff to stop, because it’s almost teasing you; you know it won’t last, and you know how terrible it’s going to be once the good stuff goes away again, so you can’t even enjoy it while it’s there. You’ve painted yourself into a corner, and there’s only one way out, one way to end the pain that you know is always going to be there.
The rational, healthy mind, of course, doesn’t look at it like that. The healthy mind can see that things will get better, and that things being “bad” is either simply perspective that can be changed, or temporary situations that will eventually remedy themselves. The depressed mind doesn’t see that, because for some reason or other, that part just doesn’t work any more.
I want to stop this right here, because it may sound too much like I’ve done a lot more research on this, and I don’t want to give any kind of impression that I know more than I really do. I very well may be wrong on all of this from the general concensus, but that’s how things work in my mind at least.
Yes, for better or worse, I have gotten to the point where I’ve contemplated suicide. Hell, I honestly contemplate it on a regular basis — today in the elevator I was standing there wishing it would break and plummet rather than make it to the office. You may think I’m joking, just talking crap about not wanting to go to work, but I’m not.
I’ve done a lot of research into suicide. It’s an interesting subject for those who are morbidly inclined. Ways to do it, ways to avoid. How to write suicide notes (yes, I’ve written one at one of my more dire moments), things to try and avoid when you’re writing them, why people write them and why some people don’t. I’ve learned that the human body isn’t as fragile as the news reports would have you think — it’s actually damned hard to kill one’s self if you’re not really into pain or trauma.
And forget slitting your wrists or OD’ing on most commonly available medications. The former will just give you a scar and a trip to the psych ward, while the latter will just be extremely painful, and will most likely lead to a lot of praying to the porcelain gods before you call the hospital.
Just to make it clear, I haven’t attempted anything so far. I won’t lie — as I’ve already said, I’ve contemplated it on many occasions, and I’ve even made plans, but I haven’t acted on anything.
Yes, I am seeing a therapist, as frequently as she can squeeze me in. I am seeing a psychiatrist as well. For those of you who may have thought as I did, that those were the same thing, they aren’t. A therapist teaches you how to deal with stuff; a psychiatrist has a medical degree and only (where I’m at, at least) spends enough time with you to figure out what meds you need.
I’m currently taking Lexapro (Escitalopram), supplemented with Abilify (Aripiprazole). The Lexapro did a great job of removing a lot of issues I had with anxiety when I started it, but it did nothing as far as my depression goes. Abilify is an atypical antipsychotic when used at it’s “normal” dosage (sorry — I don’t know what that dosage is), but when used at a much smaller dose it works well with anti-depressants to supplement their effects.
They worked great when I started them, but their effects have recently started to dwindle, and I’m going to talk to the shrink at my next appointment about switching to something else.
There’s a couple of reasons I bring all this crap out into the open. One, I want you to know just in case I go off on some whiny tangent about how I need to quit my day job (yes, my day job causes about 80-90% of my suicidal thoughts, but I’m not going to explain that right now), or some other rant that sounds like someone who just can’t deal with things. I try to hold off on those as much as possible, but some times I just can’t help it, and now you know why.
The other reason is that, if you or someone you know is suffering from depression (God I sound like one of those damned commercials), feel free to talk about it here or on any of the other venues I frequent. I don’t mind trying to help when I can. But also know that you’re not alone, and contrary to the stigma that’s out there, it’s okay to get help. It’s a lot better than trying to off yourself, that’s for damned sure.
Okay, it’s way past my bedtime and the missus is probably wondering why I haven’t come to bed yet when a couple of hours ago I was curled up in there after work (yes, it was a very bad day on the depression front — and to prove a point, nothing really happened that made it “bad”, either).
Catch you on the flip side, and feel free to ask anything you want about me, depression, whatever
–Matt
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b83de791-9d13-498a-a14b-a7dc3ecf51e4)
Networked Blogs (on Facebook)
