How to deal with depression | Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems and can decrease your ability to function at work and at home.
Depression symptoms can vary from mild to severe and can include:
- Feeling sad or having a depressed mood
- Loss of interest or pleasure in activities once enjoyed
- Changes in appetite — weight loss or gain unrelated to dieting
- Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
- Loss of energy or increased fatigue
- Increase in purposeless physical activity (e.g., inability to sit still, pacing, handwringing) or slowed movements or speech (these actions must be severe enough to be observable by others)
- Feeling worthless or guilty
- Difficulty thinking, concentrating or making decisions
- Thoughts of death or suicide
Symptoms must last at least two weeks and must represent a change in your previous level of functioning for a diagnosis of depression.
Credit to american psychiatric association
Being listened to
It is important for people to have the opportunity to explore difficult feelings. Being listened to in confidence, and accepted without prejudice, can alleviate general distress, despair and suicidal feelings.
Often being listened to is enough to help someone through a time of distress. Even just showing that you are there for them, and that you know they are going through a distressing time, can in itself be a comfort.
Are you a good listener?
Do you:
Always try to give people your undivided attention?
Let them sit in silence and collect their thoughts if they need to?
Question them gently, tactfully and without intruding?
Encourage them to tell their story in their own words and in their own time?
Refrain from offering advice based on your own experience?
Always try and see their point of view even though you may not agree with it?
... these can help show someone that you are really listening to them.
or Do you:
Look around the room or glance at your watch while they are talking?
Finish their sentences for them and correct their grammar?
Interrupt to tell them how you once had a similar problem?
Make a snap judgement based on their accent, dress or personal appearance?
Tell them what you would do in their position?
Say you understand before you've heard what their problem is?
... but these can give the impression that you are not listening.
Helping a Suicidal Friend or Relative
Be quiet and listen!
If someone is feeling depressed or suicidal, our first response is to try to help. We offer advice, share our own experiences, try to find solutions.
We'd do better to be quiet and listen. People who feel suicidal don't want answers or solutions. They want a safe place to express their fears and anxieties, to be themselves.
Listening - really listening - is not easy. We must control the urge to say something - to make a comment, add to a story or offer advice. We need to listen not just to the facts that the person is telling us but to the feelings that lie behind them. We need to understand things from their perspective, not ours.
Here are some points to remember if you are helping a person who feels suicidal.
What do people who feel suicidal want?
Someone to care. Someone who will make themselves available, put the person at ease and speak calmly. Someone who will reassure, accept and believe. Someone who will say, "I care."
What do people who feel suicidal not want?
To be advised. Lectures don't help. Nor does a suggestion to "cheer up", or an easy assurance that "everything will be okay." Don't analyze, compare, categorize or criticize. Just listen.
To be interrogated. Don't change the subject, don't pity or patronize. Talking about feelings is difficult. People who feel suicidal don't want to be rushed or put on the defensive. Just listen.
credit to befrienders.org.my
