How to help someone with depression?

Ever questioned yourself that how to help someone with depression? Well, here’s your answer!

We often see our friends being too depressed that we are unable to find out the solutions for them. Sometimes we don’t even realize that one of our friends is depressed and needs our help. 

Their sudden irritation, mood swings, distant behavior and rudeness in conversation make us feel that they want to get rid of us. We start to assume that there may be somebody else taking our place, and we no more share the same bond with them.

This is normal in any friend circle. Especially when you are too close or best friend with somebody, you get the feeling of being distant through their behavior. So when you get this feeling and you don’t know the reason behind their behavior, please take efforts to know the reason.

In case you already doubt that they are depressed but not sure if it’s true, try to observe its symptoms. The symptoms of depression are the only answer to your question. If you happen to notice the symptoms of depression, then comes the question of ‘how to help someone with depression?’

When you will notice the symptoms you will realize that it was depression who was taking over your friend’s normal behavior. And it was depression that was hurting you all this while. This will also make you aware of how depression is killing the realness of your friend and how you have to remove him/her out of it. 

First, let’s learn about the symptoms of depression so you will be able to know your friend’s problem better.

5 Symptoms of Depression

1. Sleeping disorder

Individuals sleeping cycle changes. They start to sleep less or sleep more than needed. This leads to change in the body physically and mentally both. Individuals due to more sleep start to gain weight, they feel swelled, and their stamina decreases. Individuals sleeping less than needed develop muscle pain, strains in their eyes, dark circles and mental health issues.

2. Suicidal thoughts

Because their sleeping cycle changes, they start to overthink as well. Their problem increases because of extra thinking. And so whatever they think, they blame themselves in their thoughts. They start to harm themselves because of the issues going on and this makes them isolate themselves so that nobody has to know what’s going on inside.

3. Anxiety

Their anxiety and fear increases. This makes them too short-tempered and arrogant. They start to dislike everything they ever liked doing. They start to not go out, to not meet anybody, moreover, they tend to wear the same clothes for weeks and months without even realizing that they are now enough dirty to stop wearing. Also, they tend to have an eating disorder which brings a lot more issues than usual.

You can click here to know more about social anxiety and eating disorders.

4. Increase in physical pain

Regular and severe headache, body pain and eye strains are too common in depression.

5. Addictions

Individuals tend to get addicted to drugs and alcohol because of their problems. They start to stay distant from their family and friends so that nobody has to judge them. This also makes them feel better and forget about their problems, which is not a right solution to get over your depression. It, in fact, makes you go more deeply into it and kill yourself.

These are the common symptoms of individuals acquiring depression. Now, stress and depression is two different things. Depression is more like a mental illness and stress is a regular part of every individual’s life. In a process of checking whether your friend is going through depression or not, do not get misguided by the symptoms of stress.

You can click here to know the difference between stress and depression.

Now let’s talk about what to say someone with depression or how to help someone with depression.

See, depression is not any regular thing that happens to people, and we as a friend are not doctors to medicate them or counsel them to bring them out of it. We are their friends and that is the most powerful weapon anybody has to help someone with depression.

There are certain things that you require doing to help someone with depression. For example how to communicate and how to help them? It gets weird while directly talking about depression to somebody. It basically requires a process or a slow way to go to the main topic in a conversation with somebody especially when it relates to their bad health conditions.

Let’s see what are the ways you can adapt to help your friend with depression.

How to help someone with depression?

1. Conversation

A healthy way to show your concern is through communication. Communication is what brings closeness between people. If you communicate with them rightly regarding their sudden change in behavior, it would help you in helping them and help them remove out their inner thoughts as well.

For example:

• ‘I have been noticing your sudden change in behavior. It’s making me worry about your health conditions’
• We haven’t talked about things lately. And I know there’s something going on with you. It’s only us here and it’s only you that I want to check on to. If there’s something we can talk about please let me know I will be always here.
• It’s been a while that you have been behaving odd. I am concerned if there’s something going on with you. Can we please talk about it in case I am of any help to you?

2. Be a good listener

After the conversation part, if you are successful in convincing them that they are depressed, the next duty comes of listening. We are living in a generation where, ‘People don’t want to listen, people want others to listen’ and that’s where we lose most of our friends because they think that there’s nobody listening to them and there are only people who want to share so listening impacts a lot when people need us.

I will share with you my example. I am not a talkative person and like people who talk a lot. And my habit of listening to them for hours is what attracts them towards me. This is not something that I am telling you out of nowhere.

This is what I have observed. People seriously look a listener in their friends, and we directly show them that we are for sure not interested in listening to you especially if it’s too long.

If we at first only be a good listener, we wouldn’t need to look for symptoms and signs because our friends would find it easier to share whatever they are going through.

How to know more about the condition of a person with depression?

Ask them basic questions during a conversation after they have confessed that they are feeling something and it’s affecting them.

• What makes you feel this all of a sudden?
• How long it has been?
• Did you share it with someone?
• Do you need my help in any manner?
• Are you going through any medication or taking alcohol to heal?
• How can I help you with this situation?

All these questions will keep the conversation going and you will be able to know your friend’s problem better. Remember, your duty is only to listen and show concern. We have to help our friends heal themselves. Medication, medical environment, and treatments make a person go more deeply into depression. But friends help them come out of it easier than medications so if you direct them towards self-healing, your friend may start to attract positivity and slowly get better.

However, a very serious mental illness may require serious treatment.

So this was about how you can know if your friend is in depression and how can you help them come out of it. In case you need to know about something else as well please be comfortable enough to get the word to me and I would be glad to help you out with it.

Have a healthy future ahead 🙂