How to identify a Friend who may be suffering from depression
Source - Psychology Today
If your friend is experiencing depression, they may:
- Seem sad or tearful
- Appear more pessimistic than usual or hopeless about the future
- Talk about feeling guilty, empty, or worthless
- Seem less interested in spending time together or communicate less frequently than they normally would
- Get upset easily or are unusually irritable
- Have less energy, move slowly, or seem generally listless
- Have less interest in their appearance than usual or neglect basic hygiene, such as showering and brushing their teeth
- Have trouble sleeping or sleep much more than usual
- Careless about their usual activities and interests
- Seem forgetful or have trouble concentrating or deciding on things
- Eat more or less than usualtalk about death or suicide
These 10 tips can help you be a source of support for a friend with depression
1. Listen to them
Let your friend know you’re there for them. You can start the conversation by sharing your concerns and asking a specific question. For example, you might say, “It seems like you’ve been having a hard time lately. What’s on your mind?”
Keep in mind that your friend may want to talk about what they feel, but they might not want advice.
Engage with your friend by using active listening techniques:
Ask questions to get more information instead of assuming you understand what they mean. Validate their feelings. You might say, “That sounds difficult. I’m sorry to hear that.”Show empathy and interest with your body language.
Your friend may not feel like talking the first time you ask, so it can help to continue telling them you care.
Keep asking open questions (without being pushy) and expressing your concern. Try to have conversations in person whenever possible. If you live in different areas, try video chatting.
2. Help them find support
Your friend may not be aware they’re dealing with depression, or they may be unsure how to reach out for support.
Even if they know therapy could help, it can be daunting to search for a therapist and make an appointment.
If your friend seems interested in counselling, offer to help them review potential therapists. You can help your friend list things to ask potential therapists and things they want to mention in their first session.
Encouraging them and supporting them to make that first appointment can be so helpful if they’re struggling.
3. Support them in continuing therapy
On a bad day, your friend might not feel like leaving the house. Depression can zap energy and increase the desire to self-isolate.
If they say something like, “I think I’m going to cancel my therapy appointment,” encourage them to stick with it.
You might say, “Last week you said your session was productive and you felt a lot better afterwards. What if today’s session helps, too?”
The same goes for medication. If your friend wants to stop taking medication because of unpleasant side effects, be supportive, but encourage them to talk to their psychiatrist about switching to a different antidepressant or getting off medication entirely.
Abruptly stopping antidepressants without the supervision of a healthcare provider can have serious consequences.
4. Take care of yourself
When you care about someone who’s living with depression, it’s tempting to drop everything to be by their side and support them. It’s not wrong to want to help a friend, but it’s also important to take care of your own needs.
If you put all your energy into supporting your friend, you’ll have very little left for yourself. And if you’re feeling burned out or frustrated, you won’t be much help to your friend.
Set boundaries
Setting boundaries can help. For example, you might let your friend know you’re available to talk after you get home from work, but not before then.
If you’re concerned about them feeling like they can’t reach you, offer to help them come up with a contingency plan if they need you during your workday. This might involve finding a hotline they can call or come up with a code word they can text you if they’re in a crisis.
You might offer to stop by every other day or bring a meal twice a week, instead of trying to help every day. Involving other friends can help create a bigger support network.
Practice self-care
Spending a lot of time with a loved one who has depression can take an emotional toll. Know your limits around difficult emotions, and make sure you take time to recharge.
5. Learn about depression on your own
Imagine having to educate each person in your life about a mental or physical health issue you’re experiencing — explaining it over and over again. Sounds exhausting, right?
You can talk to your friend about their specific symptoms or how they’re feeling, but avoid asking them to tell you about depression in general terms.
While people experience depression differently, being familiar with the general symptoms and terminology can help you have more in-depth conversations with your friend.
6. Offer to help with everyday tasks
With depression, day-to-day tasks can feel overwhelming. Things like laundry, grocery shopping, or paying bills can begin to pile up, making it hard to know where to start.
Your friend may appreciate an offer of help, but they also might not be able to clearly say what they need help with.
If your friend is behind on dishes, laundry, or other household chores, offer to come over, put some music on, and tackle a specific task together. Simply having a company can make the work seem less daunting.
7. Extend loose invitations
People living with depression may have a hard time reaching out to friends and making or keeping plans. But cancelling plans can contribute to guilt.
A pattern of cancelled plans may lead to fewer invitations, which can increase isolation. These feelings can worsen depression.
You can help reassure your friend by continuing to extend invitations to activities, even if you know they’re unlikely to accept. Tell them you understand they may not keep plans when they’re in a rough patch and that there’s no pressure to hang out until they’re ready.
Just remind them you’re happy to see them whenever they feel like it.
8. Be patient
Depression doesn’t have a clear recovery timeline. Expecting your friend to return to their usual self after a few weeks in therapy won’t help either of you.
Depression usually improves with treatment, but it can be a slow process that involves some trial and error. They may have to try a few different counselling approaches or medications before they find one that helps their symptoms.
Even successful treatment doesn’t always mean depression goes away entirely. Your friend may continue to have symptoms from time to time.
In the meantime, they’ll probably have some good days and some bad days. Avoid assuming a good day means they’re “cured,” and try not to get frustrated if a string of bad days makes it seem like your friend will never improve.
9. Stay in touch
Letting your friend know you still care about them as they continue to work through depression can help.
Even if you aren’t able to spend a lot of time with them regularly, check in with a text, phone call, or quick visit. Even sending a quick text saying “I’ve been thinking of you and I care about you” can help.
People living with depression may become more withdrawn and avoid reaching out, so you may find yourself doing more work to maintain the friendship. But continuing to be a positive, supportive presence in your friend’s life may make all the difference to them, even if they can’t express that to you at the moment.
10. Know the different forms depression can take
Depression often involves sadness or a low mood, but it also has other, less well-known symptoms.
For example, many people don’t realize depression can involve:
- Anger and irritability
- Confusion, memory problems, or difficulty focusing
- Excessive fatigue or sleep issues
- Physical symptoms such as stomach distress, frequent headaches, or back and other muscle pain
Your friend may often seem to be in a bad mood or feel exhausted a lot of the time. Try to keep in mind that what they’re feeling is still part of depression, even if it doesn’t fit into the stereotypical versions of depression.
Things not to do
A) Don’t take things personally
Your friend’s depression isn’t your fault, just as it’s not their fault.
Try not to let it get to you if they seem to lash out at you in anger or frustration, keep cancelling plans (or forget to follow up), or don’t want to do much of anything.
You might, at some point, need a break from your friend. It’s okay to take space for yourself if you feel emotionally drained, but it’s also important to avoid blaming your friend or saying things that might contribute to their negative feelings.
Instead, consider talking to a therapist or other supportive person about how you feel.
B) Don’t try to fix them
Depression is a serious mental health condition that requires professional treatment.
It can be hard to understand exactly what depression feels like if you’ve never experienced it. But it isn’t something that can be cured with a few well-intentioned phrases like, “You should be grateful for the good things in your life” or “Just stop thinking about sad things.”
C) Don’t give advice
Though certain lifestyle changes often help improve symptoms of depression, it can be hard to make these changes amid a depressive episode.
You might want to help by offering advice, like getting more exercise or eating a healthy diet. But even if it’s good advice, your friend may not want to hear it at the moment.
There may come a time when your friend wants to find out what foods may help with depression or how exercise can relieve symptoms. Until then, though, it may be best to stick to empathic listening and avoid offering advice until asked.
Encourage positive change by inviting them on a walk or cooking a nutritious meal together.
D) Don’t minimize or compare their experience
If your friend talks about their depression, you might want to say things like, “I understand,” or “We’ve all been there.” But if you’ve never dealt with depression yourself, this can minimize their feelings.
Depression goes beyond simply feeling sad or low. Sadness usually passes fairly quickly, while depression can linger and affect mood, relationships, work, school, and all other aspects of life for months or even years.
Comparing what they’re going through to someone else’s troubles or saying things like, “But things could be so much worse,” generally doesn’t help.
Your friend’s pain is what’s real to them right now — and validating that pain is what may help them most.
E) Don’t take a stance on medication
Medication can be very helpful for depression, but it doesn’t work well for everyone.
Some people dislike its side effects and prefer to treat depression with therapy or natural remedies. Even if you think your friend should take an antidepressant, remember that choosing to take medication is a personal decision.
Likewise, if you don’t believe in medication, avoid the subject when talking to them. For some people, medication is key in getting them to a place where they can fully engage in therapy and start taking steps toward recovery.
At the end of the day, whether or not someone with depression takes medication is a very personal decision that’s generally best left to them and their healthcare provider.
When it’s time to intervene
Depression can increase a person’s risk for suicide or self-injury, so it’s helpful to know how to recognize the signs.
Some signs that might indicate your friend is having serious suicidal thoughts include:
- Frequent mood swings or personality changes
- Talking about death or dying
- Purchasing a weapon
- Increased substance use
- Risky behaviour
- Getting rid of belongings or giving away treasured possessions
- Talking about feeling trapped or wanting a way out
- Pushing people away or saying they want to be left alone
- Saying goodbye with more feeling than usual
If you’re concerned about your friend, you might worry that mentioning it to them could encourage suicidal thoughts. But it’s generally helpful to talk about it.
Ask your friend if they’ve seriously considered suicide. They may want to talk to someone about it but are unsure of how to bring up the difficult topic.
Encourage them to talk to their therapist about those thoughts, if they haven’t already. Offer to help them create a safety plan to use if they think they might act on those thoughts.
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