You Can’t Fix Someone With Depression

There’s a tendency among conscientious, good-hearted individuals, especially on a 

 

liberal arts campus, to strive to be empathetic. We strive to understand each other by 

 

considering what life is like from the perspectives of others. We try to see the world from 

 

their shoes. We all want to have empathy, never sympathy. We all want to connect with 

 

others by understanding what they’re going through, rather than simply watching from 

 

an outsider’s perspective, only able to speculate as to what they might be going 

 

through. We do this with the best of intentions, but the fact of the matter is that we can’t 

 

know what everyone is going through. A straight person cannot fully understand the 

 

perspective of a queer person. A white person cannot fully understand the experiences 

 

of a person of color. And a person who doesn’t suffer from depression cannot 

 

 

 

As conscientious, good-hearted individuals who don’t live with depression attempt to do 

 

so, we come to a disconnect. Individuals without depression look through their own 

 

personal experiences for anything resembling what an individual with depression my go 

 

through. The closest thing, for anyone who hasn’t suffered from depression, are feelings 

 

of sadness and despair. This is where the disconnect becomes most dangerous. 

 

Depression can involve sadness and despair, but it is infinitely different from both of 

 

those feelings. That’s the thing: depression is not a feeling. It’s a debilitating disability 

 

with a wide range of invisible symptoms that are understandably incomprehensible to 

 

the vast majority of individuals who have never personally dealt with a mental illness. 

 

When conscientious, good-hearted individuals try to put themselves in the shoes of 

 

people with depression, they understandably arrive at misconceptions and 

 

misunderstandings. And this can be a problem for the interactions that occur between 

 

the good-intentioned actions of people without depression and those who do suffer from 

 

it.

 

 

So, on that note, if there’s one thing that’s least talked about or understood by 

 

mainstream society when it comes to depression, it’s the fact that conventionally “good” 

 

things can sometimes make us feel worse. Depression prevents us from feeling joy in 

 

response to the things would normally make us happy, like hanging out with people we 

 

love or getting a cute gift from someone or getting a good grade on an assignment or 

 

getting a new job. When good things happen, mentally healthy people feel happy about 

 

them. For people with depression, our minds fail to generate that response of happiness 

 

and we subsequently feel even worse than we would otherwise. We feel worse because 

 

we realize that there are good things happening, but we can’t experience the joy that 

 

should come with them. The good things become a reminder of the fact that happiness 

 

is a nearly impossible feat, and when it does rarely come, it is ephemeral and fleeting.

 

 

Sometimes, it’s easier to live with depression when bad things are constantly happening 

 

to you. It might seem counterintuitive, but that way, the feelings of sadness that come 

 

with depression feel like they should be there anyway. There’s nothing happening that 

 

expects happiness as a response. It seems as though you’re in the right state of mind, 

 

considering the circumstances. In this way, people with depression can often remain in 

 

poor life conditions because it’s simply feels right to live that way. It might be sad, but 

 

it’s less depressing. Being bombarded with happy things and not being able to feel 

 

happiness is a lot more depressing than being bombarded with sad things and just 

 

feeling sadness.

 

 

There is a distinct feeling of disappointment, frustration, and helplessness that arrives 

 

when a depressed person fails to achieve the little moments of happiness that are 

 

generally expected of us. We are expected to feel happy in response to certain things, 

 

but we simply can’t feel it. This amounts to another failure, another disappointment, 

 

another reason to loathe oneself. When society expects something of us and we can’t 

 

deliver, it grates on our mental health. That’s why some of the ways our friends and 

 

family attempt to deal with our depression can be counterproductive and harmful.

 

 

When a person who doesn’t have depression tries to help a person who does have 

 

depression they often make the same mistakes. They come from the dominant mindset 

 

in society that certain things make people happy. They possess an inherent, natural 

 

expectation that kind things like bringing someone gifts or spending time with someone 

 

or a myriad of other acts of generosity will create happiness in someone. For this 

 

reason, people without depression tend to embark on journeys of kindness to “cheer up” 

 

their depressed loved ones. The problem with this is that it sets up an of expectation for 

 

the person with depression that they will experience happiness as a result of these acts. 

 

Due to the nature of the illness, a person with depression is unlikely to experience joy 

 

from anything, even if they may have at another point in their life. When you bring us a 

 

gift, expecting it to cheer us up, and we feel nothing but emptiness inside, we are not 

 

only reminded of our inability to feel happiness but also feel like we’ve disappointed 

 

someone we love. We feel like we’ve failed to live up to an expectation that has been 

 

set up. We feel like we’re dragging you into the helplessness of depression because 

 

you also have no agency in the struggle against it. 

 

 

Feeling like a failure and a disappointment can obviously be detrimental to the mental 

 

health of someone living with depression. This is why it’s so important not to approach 

 

someone’s mental illness with the intent of “fixing it.” The assumption that a layperson 

 

can have the tools to fix a mental illness is only another symptom of the societal 

 

perception that mental illness is less serious than other medical issues. If I talk to you 

 

about my mental illness, it’s because I want a space to talk and share freely, not 

 

because I’m asking you for the answers. You do not have the answers, and there’s no 

 

reason you should, unless you’re a psychologist, psychiatrist, or some other mental 

 

health professional (and maybe not even in those cases). If you approach someone with 

 

a mental illness by presenting your recipe for getting better, you’re only perpetuating the 

 

idea that mental illness is something that an individual can fix on their own, and not 

 

something that is as serious as diabetes or a heart condition or cancer, which can only 

 

be dealt with by a doctor. If someone with a heart condition came to you to talk about it, 

 

would you tell them how they should treat it? Or would you just let them talk about it, so 

 

that they could express how they’re feeling to a trusted confidant? 

 

 

When someone comes to you to talk about their mental illness, that’s what they’re 

 

doing. Talking about one’s mental illness can be a coping mechanism because it can 

 

feel relieving and freeing. Therefore, the most effective thing you can do as a listener is 

 

to just listen and occasionally ask questions that will show your interest and allow the 

 

individual to talk openly. If you set up a structure in which you present steps for the 

 

individual to take and goals for them to achieve and then expect for them to make 

 

progress in recovering from their mental illness as a result, you’re already setting them 

 

up to fail. As a layperson, you can’t possibly have the solution to someone’s mental 

 

illness. Often times, there isn’t a solution. And if that’s the case, you’re only going to be 

 

reminding that person that they have little to no control over their mental health 

 

situation. This can make them feel like they’re disappointing you because you are trying 

 

so hard to help them and that they’re once again failing to “get better.” Everyone always 

 

expects us to get better, but sometimes we can’t. Or sometimes it takes years, or 

 

decades. If you set up a conversation in an advice-giving structure, you’re setting up the 

 

conversation to be goal-oriented. You’re setting it up to have some kind of resolution or 

 

accomplishment or plan of action. That might be suitable in a doctor’s office while 

 

drafting a treatment plan. But in this case, it’s destructive to the mentally ill person. It will 

 

be another resolution they can’t make or another goal they can’t achieve, and even 

 

worse, they’ll be disappointing someone they love in the process. 

 

 

When you do something kind for a depressed person or offer some advice and then 

 

look to them with those expectant eyes thinking, “So? Did it work?” you’re only making 

 

us feel like a disappointment to someone we love and care for. Because we want to be 

 

happy for you, but we just can’t.

 

 

Author’s Note: In using the word “we” throughout this essay, I do not mean to presume 

 

that I speak for all individuals suffering from depression. I use the word “we” to express 

 

solidarity with those who do feel that these words resonate with them.