please help me help my friend

[BatteryOperatedBoyfriend]

I hope you don't mind me putting this in mental health. I'm desperately sad for my friend. She has had a very hard time over the past 8 years of so, losing a loved one, seeing close family go through cancer (surviving), losing a couple of friends too (she was with one at the end - this haunts her).

She now has a young family and because of the fact that if she stops to think she gets depressed, she works all hours God sends (she has a good inheritance so money is not the reason). Her husband is unhappy ad he never sees her, her children wake in the middle of the night and play up as they know she will be at home. She's exhausted, she is in self destruct mode too - on one hand she cries at the thought if not being around for her DC's but she smokes and goes on the sun bed knowing that the cancers that run in her family will get her anyway.

She keeps getting ill, she has enlarged glands, night sweats, sickness. She tells me that the GP isn't worried.
I don't know how to help her, I keep trying to talk to her about getting help. But she puts on such a happy facade, it's hard to get through to her.

[Marchate]

She has been through a lot

If the GP isn't worried, is it possible your friend hasn't told them everything that's wrong, physically and mentally?

[BatteryOperatedBoyfriend]

No I don't expect she has told them everything at all. I will try and ask her to go back again, but it's unlikely she will.

Would some kind of counselling help her to change the way she thinks about the past? Her words to me where that they are too horrible to forget but too hard to think about. Almost like some kind of post traumatic stress maybe?

[gingerboy1912]

Could she have an over active thyroid on top of everything. Her behaviour seems a bit manic. I'm not sure what you can do other than be there if she needs to talk.

[BatteryOperatedBoyfriend]

Thanks I will look up the symptoms on overactive thyroid.

She does talk to me sometimes which is good, but I sometimes hate to bring it up for fear of upsetting her.

[Marchate]

Unless she can access a private counsellor, her best chance of being referred by the GP is to tell them as much as possible

If you go to the doctor and say, I have a sore knee, they are not going to refer you for a heart scan... They can only work with the information they are given

Encourage her to be open with the GP, even if it's difficult. Or at least suggest she mentions that she has many problems and would like to talk with a counsellor