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Depression Help for Couples

Depression can cause an overwhelming divide in your relationship with your partner. Because the effects of depression reach out well past the victim and cause suffering to the closest loved ones, it is not a condition that can be handled as a separate entity in the relationship. Often, couples counseling helps affected couples to learn to communicate with one another in a way where both parties are heard and feelings are understood while keeping the diagnosis and treatment of depression in mind.

Depression causes its share of problems in a partnership and usually leads to an increasingly habitual kind of withdrawal. In the confines of a relationship this forces not one, but two people alone.

Kathy said:

I often wondered if I had done something to cause this behavior in Dan. Had I said something wrong? Had he just fallen out of love with me? I didn’t know how much longer I could stand being shut out like that.

For couples where one is suffering from depression, it is critical for them to both understand that depression is a disorder and is not caused by the other partner. It is also important to realize that some adaptations need to be made within the couple’s dynamic in order to allow for the symptoms and management of the depression.

Depression is a serious condition that shouldn’t be ignored and it should never be looked at as something to be ashamed of. If your partner is suffering from depression, entering into couples counseling can help both of you.

This article was written by Staff Writer, and posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 8:00 am. It is filed under Counseling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Depression Help for Couples”

The Pro Marriage Counselor on January 13th, 2012 at 4:21 pm

It’s true. I’m reminding of that major Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples (EFT) study from a few years back. Turns out there were a number of clinically depressed couples in a major therapy research sample.

The depression actually disappeared in most of the cases as a result of the evidence-based couple-counseling alone. there was no targeted depression treatment. That’s the power of effective couple-counseling!