Loving Someone With Depression
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that all times of great expansion come with great decay, and depression is a tragic disease that is growing with quite an alarming rapidity, a rate which seems to coincide with our societal expansion. Depression has grown to become the leading cause of disability in our world globally, meaning 1 in 4 people will not only develop major depressive disorder, nor does that include all of the people who continue to labor and work through their diagnoses or even undiagnosed depression, but a full 25% of us worldwide will be considered disabled because of their depression. This means, of course, that depression will likely touch every single one of us at some point in our lives. But decay is not the whole story of us as individuals. Decay is not the beginning and it isn’t always the end. Nietzsche also etched into his notebooks in 1887:
“There is an element of decay in everything that characterizes
modern man: but close beside this sickness stand signs of an untested force and powerfulness of the soul.”
If we’ve chosen to stand by those who’ve been stricken by the disease of depression, there are things we can do to better their lives, and while some of them may seem counter-intuitive, they can greatly effect the outcome of both their well-being and ours, which can feed off of one another and create…
