Dear Amy: I have a very close friend who is extremely depressed. She is negative about every aspect of her life: marriage, career and self-image. She posts negative memes on Facebook about how ugly she is, how depressed she is and how bad life is.
She is on medication and is seeing a licensed therapist. She is also extremely overweight. None of this is helping. She has tried different meds and has seen different therapists.
Every time I talk to her she is negative, depressed and complains constantly. I want to help her but I don’t know what else I can offer her. We have been close for many years and she has always been depressed, but it’s far worse now than ever.
What else can I offer besides a listening ear, without getting down myself?
What advice can I give her when she is complaining?
— Out of Answers
Dear Out: I think that offering advice in this context is a nonstarter.
When someone is clearly depressed and so obviously negative, the best thing you can do is to point the person toward therapy and treatment. And so you can respond: “What does your therapist say about that?”
Your friend might respond that she doesn’t disclose a lot of this to her therapist. Many people paradoxically don’t actually disclose the very things that cause them the most pain to their therapists.
