What Can You Do if Your Partner is Depressed?
Having depression can be an isolating experience. Depression not only affects you as a person, but it can also impact your relationships. If your partner is suffering from depression, you might also find yourself isolated, feeling helpless, afraid, and unsure of what to do.
I often hear my clients ask me how they can be there for their partners who are dealing with depression or other mental illness. For today’s post, I want to share with you some suggestions that might help as you support your partner with depression.
Learn more about Depression
The first step you can take to support your partner with depression, is to learn more about what depression is! You can check out this handy blog post here for a more in-depth look at depression, but here are the basics:
Depression is an umbrella-term for a category of mental illnesses, including Major Depressive Disorder (which is the most common).
A major sign of depression is having a depressed (or sad) mood and losing interest in things.
Other symptoms include: hopelessness, changes in your appetite or weight, sleeping too much or too little, feeling tired, being irritable, having difficulty concentrating, feeling restless or slow, and thoughts of death or suicide.
Try to Understand Them and Provide Support
If your partner is depressed, they may do things that you don’t understand. The next best thing you can do to be there for them is to try and understand them. This can look like asking questions, such as:
Can you help me understand how you are feeling?
What activities do you find enjoyable right now?
How are your energy levels this week?
If they’re not able to answer, avoid judgement or placing blame. Depression is a serious mental condition that deserves to be taken seriously. To provide more support, you can ask questions like:
What can I do to help?
Would it be helpful if I….?
Do you need to be left alone right now?
Accept the bad days
When you have depression, there will be both good days and bad days. It’s important to be aware of this and accept this when supporting your partner. Some things you can do to help you accept these bad days include:
Have expectations that some days will be worse than others, which is normal
Not withdrawing love or support on these difficult days
Taking time to do something you enjoy, either by yourself or with other people
Remind yourself and your partner that there will be better days
Take care of yourself
While this post has explained how to support your depressed partner, one of the most important things you can do is take care of yourself during this time. When caring for a partner with depression, it’s not uncommon to feel frustrated, afraid, drained or even develop depressive symptoms yourself (source).
You may have heard the saying ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup.’ Well, that’s especially important here; You can’t support your partner if you are not taking care of yourself! Doing so can look like: spending time with others besides your partner, asking help from friends or family, exercising and eating a balanced diet, getting good sleep, attending support groups, doing the hobbies and activities you love, setting realistic expectations, and remembering that you and your mental health matter too.
Encourage and support their treatment
This last tip can be a challenging one. Sometimes, we may be the ones who notice our partner’s depression before they do. While it can be challenging to see our partners suffer, we cannot force someone to get treatment or try and “fix them.”
If you would like to encourage your partner to get treatment, you may want to begin by sharing your concerns and thoughts. This can sound like, “Hey, I’ve noticed that you’ve been sleeping until 1 pm for almost 2 weeks. This has me worried about you and I’m wondering if we can talk about it.”
If they are ready to look into treatment, you can encourage them to research treatment options and even offer to help them with their search (often times depression can cause low motivation, so your partner may appreciate the help). If they are already getting treatment, with their permission, you can offer supportive reminders for their appointments, medications, or other important tasks to help them stay on track.
Final Thoughts
Depression affects about 17 million adults in America every year (source). You may find that your partner is experiencing symptoms of depression and feel unsure of what you can do to help. Hopefully, this article shed some light on what you can do to support them during this challenging time. Let them know that you’re there for them, but remember you are not responsible for your partner’s mental health. If you or your partner need additional support from a mental health care professional, I am currently accepting clients for both in-person and online sessions. To set up a free 15-minute consultation with me, click here and reach out.
