How To Help Someone With Depression

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How To Help Someone With Depression

It’s a tough task to deal with depression. It’s even harder to help someone conquer it. More often than not, it’s up to a friend or a family member to offer the support, which can lead to recovery. That’s why many people ask how to help someone with depression.

Being near someone who has depression is a big responsibility. Depressed people desperately need support, but giving it is rarely gratifying. Helping a friend with depression may take a serious toll on a friendship. Learning how to help a loved one with depression can be hard. However, when you know you may be the only one who can help, the inspiration can do wonders.

How To Help A Loved One With Depression

Before you read further, you need to understand that it’s impossible to help a loved one with depression unless you have patience. Patience is your main tool in the war against depression. You have to learn how to stay calm, breathe deep, and avoid showing adverse reactions to the person’s actions.

If you feel as if you are not ready to deal with the problem, it’s up to you to find someone, who can. Professional help is always useful. However, it may be quite hard to convince your loved one to accept it.

1. Talk To A Doctor

When you notice your loved one has depression symptoms, consider getting professional help. While, as we said earlier, it might be close to impossible to convince a person to get help, nothing should prevent you from going to a doctor and asking how to help someone with severe depression.

Coming to the psychiatrist and talking about your loved one problems can be highly beneficial. You can learn a variety of depression-fighting methods. Meanwhile, your own mental health is at risk. So you may want to ask for tips how to stay calm and helpful while conquering someone else’s depression.

2. Lend Your Ears

Even if you don’t know yet how to help a spouse with depression, you can at least listen. Compassionate listening can do wonders for helping a person feel better. It’s common for depressed individuals to isolate themselves and withdraw from the real world.

You may be the only connection your loved one has left. Don’t sever it. Always be ready to listen to your partner. Listen with empathy and compassion. Talking it out is a wonderful way to start conquering depression.

3. Google It

Doing research is one of the most important things you can do. Unless you are a doctor, you have no idea how to help a family member with depression. Thankfully, you have plenty of resources to turn to.

Learn as much as you can about the depression. Find out how toidentify the symptoms and whatwords to say to help. You can search for professional help or find out what to do in extreme situations. When you are armed with information, you have much better chances of conquering this condition.

Beware! Even if you’ve done your depression homework, don’t think you understand what the person is feeling. Keep acting compassionate.

4. Keep Your Chin Up

Depressed people can benefit from talking to someone, who is positive. Even if you aren’t feeling too cheerful, try not to show it to your partner. Of course, false cheerfulness won’t do him or her any good. However, scolding, grunting, and acting upset can worsen the person’s condition further.

Try to leave your problems at the doorstep, if you can.Create a positive presence.

5. Care For Yourself

While you are wondering how can I help someone with depression, don’t forget about yourself. Being next to a depressed person is hard. Sometimes people can’t help but slowly sink into depressive moods. Helping someone with depression doesn’t mean you have to focus on the person entirely.

Don’t allow yourself to follow suit. Thank yourself for all the efforts and try to enjoy life to its fullest extent. If it’s hard to do when you are next to your partner, do it when he or she is not around. Eat your favorite food, go out, read books, and have fun as much as you can. This can help you maintain a positive attitude.

6. Offer Physical Help

Depressed people often have trouble doing everyday chores. In fact, it’s a tough effort for them to make it through the day. Even if it has always been your husband’s responsibility to do laundry, do it for him. Perhaps you can load the dishwasher and iron your shirts instead of forcing your loved one to do it.

Of course, you don’t have to deal with all the chores. But at least take care of the ones that involve getting out of the house. You will allow your partner to have some valuable personal time.

7. Be Encouraging

Encourage your partner to keep fighting the depression by pointing out their improvements and efforts. The person should understand that dealing with depression is hard but possible. Every time he or she does something tough like getting out of the house for a walk or calling up a friend to chat, make sure you notice and commend them for it.

Help your loved one see that the treatment is having an effect. This will encourage him or her to keep working toward recovery.

8. Pay Attention

As a person, whose loved one is in trouble, you are responsible for being extremely attentive. Your attention to details can help a person deal with depression and prevent unfortunate consequences.

People, who suffer from depression, are often unpredictable. The disease may reach a point when they think that suicide is the only option. While you are working on making sure this point never comes, pay special attention to the person’s behavior. It may be up to you to prevent a disaster.

9.T ake Preventive Measures

People, who have suffered from depression in the past, are likely to go through it again. That’s why you need to watch your loved one closely, especially when they experience something disturbing, such as someone’s death, a job loss or a serious illness.

Catching the depression at its early stages can shorten the long road to recovery. Learning how to help a partner with depression before it strikes can help you deal with it quicker.

How To Help A Man With Depression

Many women wonder how to help a husband with depression. Men deal with depressions slightly differently than women do. They are less likely to accept help andmore likely to commit suicide. Meanwhile, women have more patience to help men get out of depression as long as they have the right tools.

1. Learn The Warning Signs of Suicide

Not all depressed men want to commit suicide. However, such a danger exists. That’s why along with learning how to help a person with depression, you need to find out about thewarning signs of suicide.

Men are more likely than women to commit suicide because they have a less formidable fear of death. When it comes to being depressed, such fear can become even weaker. It’s possible to prevent suicide as long as you catch the warning signs early.

2. Don’t Blame Him

Even if your partner is acting terrible and makes you feel bad, don’t blame him. Depressed people often blame themselves for everything that happens around them. If you add your blame to the mix, it can worsen the situation.

Instead of blaming him, blame the disease and team up to fight it. Most depressed men secretly fear losing their partner while in depression. Part of your support is showing him that you are ready to fight together.

3. Encourage Professional Therapy

Men may have a harder time recovering from depression than women do. They can strongly benefit from professional therapy. However, forcing your husband or boyfriend to make an appointment won’t do any good. He will most likely withdraw from you even further.

Gentle encouragement is the key to success. You may want to suggest joining him for a therapy session, at least the first time. Try to make the visit to the therapist as easy as possible.

4. Create A Supportive Environment

The majority of men view their homes as their fortresses. When they are depressed, they require the supportive environment even more than usual. That’s why it’s up to their partner to be as supportive as possible.

Consider changing eating habits to healthy and introducing exercise into your routine. Always encourage and reward the partner for his steps toward recovery. Create a low-stress environment at home by avoiding fights.

5. Set Small Goals

Depressed people have a hard time making long-range plans. Especially, when it comes to getting out of depression. They are stuck blaming themselves for past mistakes and everything they do now.

Help your partner set small goals on his way to recovery. Break down large tasks into small ones. For example, if the depression has to do with losing a job, the first task can be reviewing the resume, the second - updating it, the third - writing a cover letter, etc. Each small step should bring a small reward and numerous words of encouragement.

6. Care For Yourself

All the above advice may sound depressing since it seems as if you are stuck forgiving all the terrible behavior from your partner. It’s important that you don’t lose yourself in his depression. Make sure you continue doing things you enjoy.

If your partner starts humiliating you or making you feel depressed, find a way to distance yourself for a short while. At the same time, seek help from other friends and family members.

How To Help A Girlfriend With Depression

Learning how to help a person with depression is tough. It’s even tougher to do when that person is someone close to you. Men often wonder how to help their girlfriends with depression. Below tips can be helpful.

1. Don’t Try To Solve It

Depression is not a problem, which can be solved in a day. It’s a long road to recovery, which requires many steps. So it’s important to come down and relax. Running around and saving the world won’t help in this situation.

It’s better to settle down and do some extensive research on how to help people with depression. Try to follow advice instead of acting as if you know what needs to be done.

2. Learn To Listen

You may not be much of a listener, but your girlfriend needs one right now. It might seem impossible at first, but you’ll get used to it. Depressed women need someone, who listens without being judgmental.

Again, when you hear her talk about a problem, don’t try to find ways of fixing it. What she needs is compassionate listening and words of encouragement.

3. Communicate Your Love

Even if you are not a big fan of saying “I Love You”, it’s time to learn. Depressed people need love and support like air. They often feel as if no one loves them. It’s up to you to show them it’s not true.

Battling depression without a loved one by your side is very hard. No matter how bad of a day you may have had at work, find the time to show your love and compassion.

4. Find The Right Words

Finding the right words may be tough, especially if you are not much of a talker. Your phrases should be compassionate, loving, and encouraging. Keep blame and judgement out of your vocabulary. When you research how to help someone with depression and anxiety, you are bound to find a list of suitable phrases.

5. Don’t Take It Personally

Depressed people have an altered sense of reality. They feel as if everything around them is worse than it really is. Sometimes, such a feeling keeps them from getting out of the bed in the morning.

Depressed women may not find the energy to get up and go on a date or care for their partner. Actions of a depressed person directly contradict the actions of someone in a healthy relationship. Don’t take them personally.

Final Thoughts

How do you help someone with depression? There are many different ways to do it. It’s highly important to view the depression as a disease, which requires a lengthy treatment. If your loved one is depressed, your relationship is in jeopardy. It’s usually up to you to keep it going.

Get ready for a long fight with many setbacks but never give up. Depression is a treatable condition. All you have to do is keep treating it until it’s gone for good.

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