719-622-6522Helping a partner struggling with depression can make every day feel like a struggle. While supporting a loved one with depression can be a delicate time (especially if you don’t struggle with it yourself), so long as you approach the situation with patience, empathy, and love, your influence can be crucial in helping your partner with their struggle.
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Helping a partner struggling with depression can make every day feel like a struggle. While supporting a loved one with depression can be a delicate time (especially if you don’t struggle with it yourself), so long as you approach the situation with patience, empathy, and love, your influence can be crucial in helping your partner with their struggle.
How Do You Know That Your Partner Has Depression?
The first step in helping your partner with depression is to recognize the signs. Depression is more than just feeling sad; it’s a persistent and debilitating condition that affects one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Symptoms can vary depending on the person. While it’s always a good idea to encourage your partner to receive a professional diagnosis from a psychiatrist, here are a few warning signs of depression:
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- Persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness
- Loss of interest in hobbies and/or physical intimacy
- Increased fatigue
- Difficulty concentrating
- Sleep disturbances (insomnia or oversleeping)
- Sudden changes in appetite or weight
- Unexplained physical symptoms such as aches or digestive problems
- Thoughts of death and/or suicide
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How to Help a Partner With Depression
While you are likely already familiar with your partner’s typical symptoms of depression, learning more about this complex mental disorder can be crucial in supporting a loved one with depression. Take time to research depression, including its causes, symptoms, and treatments. You may consider asking your partner’s doctor for reputable sources that provide the facts about depression, such as the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
Ask Your Partner What They Need
Open and honest communication is key when helping your partner work through depression. Clinical psychologist Adam Borland, PsyD, encourages partners to work as a team in overcoming depression. Borland advises that “it’s important to show unconditional support. Express things like, ‘I’m in this with you. You’re not going to scare me. I’m not going to allow you to push me away.’”
Often, the best way to ensure that you are properly supporting your partner is to simply ask them how they’re feeling and what they need from you. Avoid judgment or expectations and simply listen to them.
Cultivate a Low-Stress Living Environment
A low-stress home environment can significantly impact your partner’s emotional well-being. This involves maintaining a clean and organized space, which can help reduce anxiety, tension, and conflict. Make an effort to clean up small messes such as piles of laundry or dirty dishes and establish a simple daily routine for you and your partner to stick to. Additionally, you can create an emotionally low-stress environment by ensuring that your home is a safe space where your partner can express their emotions without fear of judgment, allowing you both to feel more comfortable opening up to each other.
Encourage Healthy Habits
Depression can play havoc with appetite and energy levels, making it difficult for a person who struggles with depression to make healthy choices involving their sleep schedule, daily routines, and diet. As a partner, you can gently encourage healthier habits without being pushy. Make self-care a priority for both of you by suggesting daily walks, getting involved in planning and cooking healthy meals, creating a sleep schedule, or engaging in hobbies that both you and your partner can find joy in. Even the smallest change in your partner’s daily routine can go a long way in helping them fight their depression.
Give Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement can be a powerful tool to boost your partner’s self-esteem and motivation in the midst of hopelessness. Take time to point out strengths, efforts, and accomplishments, no matter how small. Just be sure to strike a balance between healthy positivity and toxic positivity. Your goal should be to create an environment where your partner doesn’t feel pressured to fake their happiness, as this could cause them to conceal their low moments from you in the future.
Know the Warning Signs of Suicide
The risk of suicide is unfortunately elevated for individuals suffering from major depressive disorder. While it’s essential to remain positive and supportive, it’s equally vital to be aware of the red flags of self-harm and suicide to know when to seek out immediate help or contact a crisis hotline. Some signs to watch for include:
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- Expressing consistent thoughts of extreme sadness or hopelessness
- Drastic/sudden changes in mood or engaging in self-destructive behavior
- Withdrawal from loved ones
- Giving away belongings
- Preoccupation with thoughts of death
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Remember Your Own Mental Health
Supporting a loved one with depression can be an emotionally taxing endeavor. For you to support your loved one properly, it is imperative that you support your own mental health, too. Seek support from friends, family, or a therapist if needed to keep yourself in a healthy mental state. Remember: you cannot effectively help your partner if you’re not taking care of yourself!
Encourage Your Partner to See a Psychiatrist
Helping a partner with depression can be challenging. But you don’t have to go it alone. Encourage your partner to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist and find a treatment that will help them effectively manage their depression.
Psychiatrists have multiple treatment options available for depression, including antidepressant medication and newer treatments like ketamine, Spravato, and TMS. Ketamine and Spravato are rapid-acting treatments that can alleviate depression symptoms in a few hours to days. TMS directly addresses root causes of depression in the brain to provide effective, long-lasting relief from depression.
Many patients are unaware of newer treatments available to treat depression. One of the best ways you can help a partner with depression is to encourage them to see a psychiatrist or psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at Colorado Recovery Solutions. Their mental health provider can assist in choosing the best depression treatment for them – whether it be antidepressant medication, ketamine, Spravato, TMS – or even a combination of treatment options.
Ready to learn more? Contact Colorado Recovery Solutions and take the next step to overcoming depression for yourself, a partner, or loved one.
