Helping the Depressed

Moments of sadness make their mark at some point in everyone's lives, whether due to illness, a break-up, death in the family, loss of a job, or any number of other causes. For some, these moments become drawn out into days, weeks, even months or sometimes years. Unremitting sadness usually gets labelled depression, and while about 20 million Americans experience depression at any given point in time, it can be difficult to know what to say to a friend who is struggling with these dark feelings.

Most of the time, depressed people don't want to interact with others. They prefer to hole themselves up somewhere and dwell on their negative thoughts. It's much easier to shut yourself off from the outside world when you're depressed than it is to engage with it. Emotionally healthy people tend to look at this as though it were absolute foolishness, and when you're on the outside looking in, it is, but most healthy people tend to discount depression's oppressive power.

As Christians, we are engaged in spiritual warfare, and Satan uses all kinds of lies to deceive us. Depressed people struggle with the lie, “Life is painful, hard, and joyless, and it's always going to feel this way.” It's easy to dispel this lie when your melancholy feelings only last for a few days and then clear up, but when they drag on for weeks or even months upon end, it becomes a lot easier to believe that things are never going to get better, and your life will simply be miserable forever. As Elizabeth Hurtzel wrote in the book Prozac Nation, “That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.”

Ed Welch always tells the students in his Helping Relationships class that depression can feel like different things to different people. For some, it simply feels like waking up to empty despair, morning after morning after morning. For others, depression is like the absence of feeling, a coldness inside that refuses to be thawed by either joys or tragedies. The little things that used to make you happy now make you feel no different than life's calamities. You could come home to a good meal or to an empty house and it would make no difference. You would remain unmoved. If you're talking to a depressed person, it's important to ask what exactly their depression feels like – does it feel like sadness? Emptiness? Something else? What you tell them may change depending on their response.

Ideas for Helping a Depressed Friend

I don't know that there's one key to overcoming depression, but here are a few things to keep in mind when you are dealing with a depressed person.

Don't avoid the person just because he or she is depressed. In fact, try to seek the person out on a regular basis. Yes, it would be easier to avoid him or her, but it will be worse in the long run. Your friend will likely recover faster if he spends time with others rather than stewing alone in his misery.

Know that it will be easy for the depressed person to self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, TV, video games, food, or other types of temporary pleasures. Sometimes it is advisable to try to probe gently to figure out what the person is doing to help himself or herself feel better. Your friend may need to seek professional help if his depression is closely linked to an addiction of some kind.

Be willing to listen to what he has to say. Don't immediately launch into a lecture on how it's ungodly to be depressed. Remember that David writes some pretty dark psalms. However, do try to instill some hope in the person. It might be helpful to ask him if he can think of past instances when something bad has happened and he felt like everything was ruined, but later, things changed. A college professor once told me, “Faith is looking at God's past faithfulness and trusting that he will continue to be faithful in the future.” A person can do that both on an individual level and on a corporate level, seeing how God has been personally faithful to him and also how God has been faithful to his people through the ages, as attested to in the Bible.

Encourage the depressed person to continue to be faithful in loving God and others, even though she doesn't feel like it at the moment. A lot of serving God involves patient perseverance in doing good, even when it doesn't feel like what we're doing is worthwhile. Faith involves going forth in obedience to God's commands in all seasons of life and in all circumstances, and as we grow in our walks with Christ, we will also grow in our ability to obey him even when it's the last thing we want to do.

Reassure the person of your love for them and your commitment to walking with them through what they're facing. Depression can be a lonely battle, and letting a person know you will be there for her is important.