What Not To Do If Someone In Your Family Has Depression
Many types of depression runs in families, including major depression and bipolar disorder. The odds are that sooner or later, you’re going to bump into a family member or other loved one who is depressed. The best thing you can do is get the person to talk about how they feel and encourage them to get help.
But there are also other things you want to avoid doing. This list was inspired by The Family Intervention Guide to Mental Illness: Recognizing Symptoms and Getting Treatment by Bodie Morey & Kim. T. Muesser, Ph. D.
Thinking It Will Pass
Depression doesn’t go away on it’s own, so don’t worry that you are making a fuss over nothing. Who knows? If a person has untreated depression when they die, they could turn into a ghost with depression. Perhspas that’s why ghosts do all of that wailing and moaning.
Telling the Person to Snap Out of It
A person with any type of depression CAN’T “snap out of it”. That’s like telling a cancer patient to “snap out of it”. The only thing you will accomplish is making the loved one with depression hate your guts. And then, when the situation gets so desperate that you do need to have a serious heart-to-heart with your depressed loved one, they will refuse to listen to you.
Believing That Mental Illness Doesn’t Happen In Your Family
Mental illness is not a character flaw, a judement from God or a curse of any kind. It’s an illness — which is why it has that word “illness” in the phrase “mental illness”. You’d want your loved one to get treatment for cancer, so why not mental illness?
March 17th, 2009 at 8:03 am
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March 18th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
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April 28th, 2009 at 4:52 am
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January 24th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
as much as one would think it’s more than tyhat. nobody likes to feel out of control and the first step twards healing is gaininig the self esteam and inner power