Help needed...

[Phil Parkinson]

Hi guys,

I wondered if someone may be able to help me.

My friend came to me this lunch break and told me about his flatmate who we both feel is in big trouble.

We fear he is depressed.

• He just moved to this town, away from his hometown.
• He is addicted to facebook and spends all evening on the site.
• HE cannot cook a simple meal for himself and has therefore been living off breakfast cereal for the last 4 months.
• He says he can't sleep, so goes to bed very late and then gets up at 6am.
• He hates his job.
• HE has no motivation to do anything.

When we try to encourage him to do some exercise, he just says that we "find it easier to be active" than him and he "finds it easier to be lazy."

It used to be funny that he was so self depricating and a little lazy, but now it is like this has become who he is.

My advice would be something along the lines of "buck your ideas up" and "pull yourself together"... but i don't think this would work with him.

Can anyone offer any advice... Should we take him to see a doctor?? What good would anti-depressants do if he's not even willing to help himself?

Phil x

[cdn2wheeler]

Originally Posted by Phil Parkinson

What good would anti-depressants do if he's not even willing to help himself?

Think of anti-depressants as a cast for a broken limb.

The cast doesn't actually fix the limb, it just holds the limb in place while the body fixes the limb.

SSRIs (anti-depressants) don't actually fix the depression, they just make the brain more receptive to inputs that go to the root of the problem.

That's why SSRIs - Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft and others - should always be used in conjunction with talk therapy, whether it's cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT - that was the most useful in my personal case) or another form.

Suggestions to "buck up" or "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" and the similar won't make a slight bit of difference to someone who's in a depressed state; in fact, it's highly likely that they'll be counterproductive.

I know you mean well to your friend, and your concern shows in the content and tone of your post. But frankly, unless you're a clinical psychologist, you're out of your depth here (no offence intended). Best you can do is to encourage your friend to take advantage of the resources available at his disposal, whether it's a counsellor or a physician or whatever.

[Uplift]

Yeh, I totally agree with cdn, see if you can get him to a doctor. Find a good one.