So, one of my friends suffers from depression and was just dumped by her girlfriend. I think it's very important that she seek therapy (which our school provides for free), but whenever I've brought it up before, she's insisted that talking about her problems just makes them worse. She's had some very bad experiences with therapists in the past. I plan to broach the subject again the next time I see her, and invite her to my support group, but I was wondering if someone had any suggestions of other things I could do.
Often times, the depression that one experiences or suffers as a result of internalized issues is really not helped by talking about it to someone without some firmer promise of a solution. And usually when the patient says that talking about it doesn't help, it means that the patient has an idea of what the root cause of the problem that's been internalized, but is not at a stage in their life where the root cause can be fixed or that they might be too afraid or too lazy or too unwilling to do what is needed in order to fix it. In order to convince her to at least give the professionals a try, an attempt to suggest to her ways that would fix these root causes easier, you must give her some sense of hope.
If you've fronted the idea to her a couple times, and she's turned it down flat, there's really not much else you can do. It's going to be up to her to get help. Until then, simply offer an open ear if she ever needs it. If you really feel she's hurting, you might say "If you want to do this on your own, that's your call, but promise me you'll call me or somebody else if you ever think you can't do this alone, OK?" Lex
Lex is right, you can't help someone unless they want to help themselves first so don't beat yourself up if your friend doesn't come around. All you can do is be there when she does want help. What you could also do is talk to a therapist about your friend and set an appointment for her. Then tell your friend that you made an appointment for her and its up to her if she wants to go or not. Sometimes people are unable to take the first step like making the appointment so having to make a simple decision sometimes helps. After this, if she declines, then maybe just dropping the subject would be better.
I have depression and the best thing you can do is offer the help, which you did and then wait for her to decide to accept it. It has to be something she wants to do and is open to it or it won't be beneficial to her. Just give her some time but don't push the issue too hard or it might have a bad effect
I sympathise with her.... talking always made things worse for me because of the attitudes of the people I talked to. So when I did talk to a friend and they then tried to force me to talk to someone else when I didn't want to it made me feel like I could no longer talk to that friend. Most of my friends don't even know that I had/have issues with depression. I just don't know who I can trust, so I pretend that everything's OK. So yeah.... don't push her. If she doesn't want to talk, don't make her. It's more helpful for you to just be there for her.
