How to help someone with a mental health concern.
I especially agree with the first rule, “Offer your Friendship and Support”. You’d be surprised how effective you can be just by being available to listen. It may not seem like much, but it is so infrequent that someone actually takes the time to really stop their lives and listen, that it is a huge help!
Just a note, something that has long bothered me, and has recently come to my attention again. Being in therapy, or suffering from depression, or being a survivor of child abuse, does not give you an excuse to be completely self-absorbed and act like an ass. That is all.. 🙂
You know what I don’t get? I don’t get people who are constantly unhappy with their lives, and never do anything to make a change. I mean, really, if your life is so horrible and frustrating, do something else. Happiness doesn’t just happen, it requires action on our part. If you’re unhappy and constantly complaining…
Well, I took my own advice today. All that talk about knowing your limits and knowing when a relationship is demanding too much, made a lot of sense when it came to my volunteer commitments with the Friends of the Library. I realized that while I enjoyed the work I had done there, and was…
I caught a bit of this documentary this afternoon on our local PBS station. Not enough to write a review on the News and Reviews site, but enough to have picked up a couple of interesting tidbits. One was a discussion with a doctor about how each case of depression is different, and has to…
Pin Listen to both episodes. You’ll be challenged to think about youth mental health in a much broader sense. Hopefully, you will also see that these are not easy questions to answer and that existing in the world and planning for a future right now is hard. It’s no wonder that young people are struggling. It’s time we start taking serious steps toward making it less challenging for everyone and quit looking for a silver bullet that’ll fix it.
Pin I have understood this for a long time. I can write here without having to see anyone react immediately when they read it. I can see their reaction when I tell someone about being abused in person. I can watch their facial expressions and body language. I can see every bit of their discomfort, and their signs of dismissal cut me. If you don’t think telling someone in person that you need their help isn’t scary, I can only assume that is because you’ve never done it.
So when you see someone share something on social media about their mental health, and your response is to wonder why they didn’t just talk to you about it, remember how much harder that is. Maybe they aren’t ready yet, or you just haven’t done enough to earn that trust. Consider how many people in your life may be dealing with very difficult things they just haven’t told anyone about yet.
Subscribe to our Newsletter
See a sample before subscribing here
If you’d rather use RSS – that feed is here.