How to Help a Friend Overcome Depression

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is John Bosworth, I am a licensed mental health counselor in St. Petersburg, Florida. I would like to talk about how to overcome or help a friend overcome depression. It is kind of the same thing if you can help yourself look at your depressed mood you are probably in a lot better position to help somebody else overcome their depressed mood. But paradoxically, sometimes helping somebody get through their depressed mood will actually help you. So either way you have a good strategy to help somebody or yourself get through depression. And depression is usually based on some type of neediness in our thinking. And probably those of us who are in our thirties or forties or above recognize the Old Charter commercials where they had the hopelessness, and helplessness, and kind of portrayed this person looking very down. We have a saying in rational motive behavior therapy that you can feel helpless or hopeless in a situation, but as long as you don't feel like you need for that situation to change you would probably not be depressed. And let me give you an example. I could take our sound man or our video man and say go out to the south side of the building, and push the building five feet to the north. Most people look at you like you are crazy going well that is a hopeless situation, and I am helpless to do anything about it, but they would not be depressed. So hopelessness and helplessness really doesn't capture quite the thing that we are looking for as far as depression. Quite that feeling or that emotional tone, because we have just proved that we can put you in a hopeless, helpless situation, but you might not be depressed about it. But if I told the camera man that he needs to move that building, and under all circumstances he has got to move that building five feet to the north without any help. He is probably going to be in a pretty depressed state thinking that it is necessary for my survival or for my happiness to move this building. So when we are helping somebody overcome a depressed mood we want to get them to kind of identify maybe what they are telling themselves that they need instead of that they just want or that they would prefer in order to be happy. So in helping a friend overcome depression show a lot of empathy for them at first, and reflective listening, and make sure that they feel warmth and support from you. But then really to get them to feel better, and get better try to identify some of the needs or demands that they have in their thinking. That they think would be the, they have to have that in order to be happy. So let's identify needs and demands to help friends and loved ones overcome depression. My name is John Bosworth, and we are talking about how to help a friend overcome depression."