Support for partners of people with depression
SAMHSA’s National Helpline | SAMHSA
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SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
Also visit the online treatment locator.
SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.
Also visit the online treatment locator, or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. Read more about the HELP4U text messaging service.
The service is open 24/7, 365 days a year.
English and Spanish are available if you select the option to speak with a national representative. Currently, the 435748 (HELP4U) text messaging service is only available in English.
In 2020, the Helpline received 833,598 calls. This is a 27 percent increase from 2019, when the Helpline received a total of 656,953 calls for the year.
The referral service is free of charge. If you have no insurance or are underinsured, we will refer you to your state office, which is responsible for state-funded treatment programs. In addition, we can often refer you to facilities that charge on a sliding fee scale or accept Medicare or Medicaid.
If you have health insurance, you are encouraged to contact your insurer for a list of participating health care providers and facilities.
The service is confidential. We will not ask you for any personal information. We may ask for your zip code or other pertinent geographic information in order to track calls being routed to other offices or to accurately identify the local resources appropriate to your needs.
No, we do not provide counseling. Trained information specialists answer calls, transfer callers to state services or other appropriate intake centers in their states, and connect them with local assistance and support.
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Suggested Resources
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Assures teens with parents who abuse alcohol or drugs that, "It's not your fault!" and that they are not alone. Encourages teens to seek emotional support from other adults, school counselors, and youth support groups such as Alateen, and provides a resource list.After an Attempt: A Guide for Taking Care of Your Family Member After Treatment in the Emergency Department
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Explores the role of family therapy in recovery from mental illness or substance abuse. Explains how family therapy sessions are run and who conducts them, describes a typical session, and provides information on its effectiveness in recovery.
For additional resources, please visit the SAMHSA Store.
Last Updated: 08/30/2022
Recovery and Recovery Support | SAMHSA
Recovery and Resilience
Resilience refers to an individual’s ability to cope with change and adversity. Resilience develops over time and gives an individual the capacity not only to cope with life’s challenges but also to be better prepared for the next stressful situation. Psychological resilience, the ability to cope with adversity and to adapt to stressful life events, varies widely from person to person and depends on environmental as well as personal factors. It refers to positive adaptation, or the ability to maintain mental and physical health despite participating in stressful situations. Resilience is playing up those protective factors so they can outweigh the risk factors. Optimism and the ability to remain hopeful are essential to resilience and the process of recovery.
Because recovery is a highly individualized process, recovery services and supports must be age appropriate and offered over the life course and flexible enough to ensure cultural relevancy.
What may work for adults in recovery may be very different for youth or older adults in recovery. For example, the promotion of resiliency in young people, and the nature of social supports, peer mentors, and recovery coaching for adolescents and transitional age youth are different than recovery support services for adults and older adults.
Recovery and Relationships
The process of recovery is supported through relationships and social networks. This often involves family members who become the champions of their loved one’s recovery. They provide essential support to their family member’s journey of recovery and similarly experience the moments of positive healing as well as the difficult challenges. Families of people in recovery may experience adversities in their social, occupational, and financial lives, as well as in their overall quality of family life.
These experiences can lead to increased family stress, guilt, shame, anger, fear, anxiety, loss, grief, and isolation.
The concept of resilience in recovery is also vital for family members who need access to intentional supports that promote their health and well-being. The support of peers and friends is also crucial in engaging and supporting individuals in recovery.
Peer support assists individuals to engage or stay connected to the recovery process through a shared understanding, respect, and mutual empowerment. Peer support extends beyond the reach of clinical treatment into the everyday environment providing non-clinical, strengths-based support. This relationship can help lay the foundation for SAMHSA’s four dimensions of recovery.
Recovery Support
SAMHSA advanced recovery support systems to promote partnering with people in recovery from mental and substance use disorders and their family members to guide the behavioral health system and promote individual, program, and system-level approaches that foster health and resilience; increase housing to support recovery; reduce barriers to employment, education, and other life goals; and secure necessary social supports in their chosen community.
Recovery support is provided in various settings. Recovery support services help people enter into and navigate systems of care, remove barriers to recovery, stay engaged in the recovery process, and live full lives in communities of their choice.
Recovery support services include culturally and linguistically appropriate services that assist individuals and families working toward recovery from mental and/or substance use problems. They incorporate a full range of social, legal, and other services (PDF | 409 KB). that facilitate recovery, wellness, and linkage to and coordination among service providers, and other supports shown to improve quality of life for people (and their families) in and seeking recovery.
Recovery support services may be provided before, during, or after clinical treatment, or may be provided to individuals who are not in treatment but seek support services.
These services, provided by professionals and peers, are delivered through a variety of community and faith-based groups, treatment providers, schools, and other specialized services.
The broad range of service delivery options ensures the life experiences of all people are valued and represented.
For example, in the United States there are 34 recovery high schools that help reduce the risk in high school environments for youth with substance use disorders. These schools typically have high retention rates and low rates of students returning to substance use.
Additionally, SAMHSA's Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS) advances effective recovery supports and services for people with mental or substance use disorders and their families.
Find more Publications and Resources on Recovery and Recovery Support.
What to do if a loved one is depressed: a psychologist explains
Reason and feelings
Adriana Imzh
December 14, 2016 14:31
Afisha Daily continues to ask for advice from the psychotherapist Adriana Imzh. This time we figure out how to behave if your friend, relative or loved one is depressed: is it worth feeling guilty for what is happening, will support and participation help him, and what to do if you are angry with him.
Writer Ella Derzai, when reading psychological materials on this topic, suggested replacing the word "depression" with the word "leprosy" - simply because many journalists do not try to figure out the meaning of this word. It seems to me that this approach well illustrates the difficulties of getting the name of the disease beyond the boundaries of psychiatry (when the word begins to denote a number of things that have nothing to do with the original problem). Imagine materials like "Ten Hot Drinks for Leprosy" or "How to Avoid Winter Leprosy?" nine0003
So what is depression? Depression is very different.
First, there are three levels of depression—mild, moderate (clinical), and severe (chronic). Mild depression usually goes away on its own in 2-3 months, medium depression can go away on its own or turn into severe depression, if it goes away on its own, then in six months to a year. As a rule, mild and moderate depression can be treated with a psychologist without the use of drugs, but with the use they are faster and easier.
You can no longer confuse severe depression with spleen: a person has a difficult time when he takes great care of himself, including in the sense of hygiene, it is difficult for him to get up, wash dishes, brush his teeth, clean the apartment, leave the house . In very bad situations, he forgets to eat and may die of hunger. nine0003
There is a masked depression - this is a depression in which a person is overly cheerful and constantly busy with something so as not to feel how bad he is, how tired and sad he is. This usually leads to a breakdown and the transition of depression to a severe stage.
Depressions are also of different types according to sensations. For example, asthenic depression is a severe loss of a resource due to (usually) heavy workloads and stress. It is characterized by an unpleasant feeling of a weight hanging from you, an inability to rejoice (you wake up in the morning - and it feels like you just worked two shifts in the mine). nine0003
Anasthenic depression, or depression with derealization, is characterized by a feeling that the world is not real, the walls are cardboard, the view outside the window is drawn, feelings have died out forever, the world has frozen.
This type of depression can also accompany more severe mental diagnoses, such as schizophrenia. Also, depression can be with bipolar disorder - and in the other pole, a person is cheerful and full of energy.
Depression can be caused by a hormonal imbalance after childbirth or due to menopause and aging (in a number of modern countries, antidepressants are automatically prescribed for older people). Such depressions include, for example, postpartum depression. nine0003
Endogenous depression is caused by internal biochemical processes in the body, usually leads to lifelong medication, because the body is simply not able (or has lost this ability) to produce the necessary substances on its own. Sometimes - very rarely - such depression leads to such severe conditions that it may be the basis for euthanasia in countries where this is possible.
Atypical depression is usually accompanied by a number of other symptoms that are uncharacteristic of ordinary depression, such as severe anxiety, increased appetite (usually in patients before taking antidepressants, their appetite is just reduced), severe somatic pain.
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Depression also differs in causes. Psychogenic depression is caused by severe stress, and psychotypical depression is caused by a predisposition of the nervous system and head injuries.
Also, depression can be childish and adolescent (in this category of patients, it usually occurs as a result of severe trauma - a terrible divorce of parents, school bullying, natural or man-made disasters, wars).
This is our set - quite diverse in terms of reasons, ages, statuses and manifestations. nine0003
Finding recommendations for relatives of all patients with depression is quite difficult. Therefore, it is probably worth starting with an understanding of what kind of depression your loved one has, how long it lasts and what is needed for it to pass.
For example, with asthenic and psychogenic, as well as with childhood and adolescent depression, rest and recovery, love and support of loved ones, hope - hope is very necessary - and faith in a brighter future.
Over time, the body will recover itself. And while he is recovering, in general, the approach is the same as with a severe flu - remind him to take pills, hold his hand, stroke his head and sympathize with what is happening. nine0003
In more severe cases, care is very much needed: people in this state really find it difficult to do even household chores, and when taking antidepressants, when the body begins to recover, drowsiness also increases (and, as a rule, libido is depressed). Therefore, such things as many hours of sex, extreme sports, a trip to Burma for a week, snowball fights and long shopping trips will not lead to the fact that Princess Nesmeyana will come to life, but to the fact that she will turn into the shadow of Hamlet's father, which can only cursing indistinctly. He will also get sick for sure with something - from a banal cold to some exotic inflammation of the Achilles tendon and neuralgia. nine0003
If you are not the cause of depression in a person (you have not betrayed, you have not divorced, you have not tried to drown yourself in acid in a Joker costume), do not blame yourself.
Depression, like cancer, is caused by a complex combination of different factors, and you are probably not the most important person there.
On the contrary, the ability to stay with a person in depression without depreciation (are you completely lazy?) is a jewelry art that is far from accessible to every person, even if he has a special education. nine0003
And it seems to me that an important factor in being around a depressed person is taking care of yourself. Remember that living next to someone who is constantly worried, afraid, or crying is also not easy. Do not lock yourself at home with him, otherwise depression will defeat you too. Look for support in work, friends, trips to nature (if it makes you happy), shopping, skydiving, watching funny comedies - in general, do not forget about yourself. Your life goes on - as does the life of a person with depression.
Don't forget about responding to aggression. If you are an ordinary active person who is used to living and enjoying life, then a slow, whiny, tired and weak person, who at the same time has not lost either arms or legs, will cause you a lot of irritation.
Find yourself a place where you can swear at such a life and such a sad state of affairs. nine0003
Distribute your attention evenly so as not to leave the one who is nearby without support, food and help, and yourself without life and pleasures.
If your loved one is seriously ill for a long time, remember that there are support groups for relatives of patients with psychiatric diagnoses, as well as psychologists and psychotherapists who can support you too.
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Ekaterina Mikhailova
Instead of words. How to act if a partner is depressed
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
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Writer Nelly Shulman about how to act if your partner is depressed.
nine0088 The University of Alberta, Canada, knows firsthand the cold and depression associated with seasonal climate change. The local researchers became interested in how relationships in couples affect the well-being of a partner who is in a depressed state. Since in St. Petersburg the whole city is in constant depression for most of the year, there is no more relevant research for us. The news received from Canada is divided into good and very good.
Firstly, the support provided to a partner in depression has a positive effect on the self-esteem of the second part of the couple. “Helping a loved one, we value our own successes and achievements in the future,” scientists explain. “Negative reactions of a depressed partner, that is, rejection of help, which often happens in this state, should not serve as an obstacle to support.” nine0003
According to researchers, help does not have to be targeted: "Often a simple action, not accompanied by a verbal message, provides a partner with more help than even a conversation.
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As an example, they cite such a simple thing as helping around the house: “Often a person suffering from depression does not have the strength and desire to do household chores. In this case, the support of the second partner may consist in quietly, without attracting attention, to take care of those aspects of life that cause difficulties in depression. People in this state usually, for example, do not cope well with the logistics of everyday life. nine0003
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The very good news is that such inconspicuous, quiet help is much more useful for our self-esteem than loud calls for a partner , who is depressed, with advice to "pull yourself together" and "not think about any nonsense."
Actions for self-esteem are always more useful than words.
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