Depression and community
(Nimue)
When people are depressed, they can struggle to find the will and energy to take care of themselves. However, lack of self-care will contribute to all of the feelings that feed depression, so this can have the effect of digging a person in with their struggles.
If you want to support someone who is struggling with their mental health, practical interventions can be a really good idea. You don’t need to understand what a person is going through or why to be able to get in for this. You may well not be able to do anything about the underlying causes, but dealing with practical issues solves practical problems and can help a person get back on top of things.
It’s really important if you are getting in for practical stuff not to make the person who is struggling feel useless. There are lots of ways of handling this, and it pays giving some serious thought. If you treat the mental health crisis the same way you would a serious bout of the flu, that can be a good approach. Encouraging ill people to relate to being ill as though they had flu, or worse, can of itself be a helpful tool for coping. Rest, comfort, good food, warm drinks, gentle distractions – all the things you might consider helpful for someone who is bodily ill will also aid recovery when their brain is in trouble.
It is very difficult sometimes doing this stuff for yourself, because depression makes it harder to care about yourself, harder to see any point trying, or to act. However, if you can be kind to yourself it aids recovery. If the depression is longer term it needs treating like recovering from a long term illness.
It takes ill people time to rebuild strength. Confidence can be badly knocked by illness and this is just as true when depression wipes someone out. Doing normal things can be intimidating and overwhelming when you’re ill, and it can take a little while to build back up again. Help and support around this can really make a difference.
It’s not unusual for depression to be linked to long term illness. People who are physically ill or have been injured or who are struggling with physical pain for other reasons can often become depressed, because that stuff will grind you down. Doing as much as you can to deal with the practical issues is always a good idea. Exhaustion will also cause depression, and rest is a very good answer in face of this. When people experience massive life upheavals, they often need time to process that. It helps in the face of loss and grief to be able to move gently, and again, practical support is a really good idea.
In my experience, depression is an ailment that responds well to practical care. I say this having lived with depression over more than a decade, and having supported other people through periods of mental health crisis. When people are given time to rest and recover, the odds of getting over depression and getting back on top of things are greatly improved. Being required to slog on while depressed really entrenches it, and not being able to put your mental health first is itself a harsh thing to deal with that further undermines mental health.
We can do a lot of good for each other by encouraging and supporting rest and recovery whenever someone is struggling. Small gestures of care are helpful and are worth making if that’s what you can manage. Taking people seriously when they’re struggling and need to rest is a good choice. Simply by being kind to each other we create spaces where good mental health is more possible.
