How to support my depressed DH

[disneyprincess87]

Hi all

DH refuses to see the doctor or talk to anyone. We’re presuming it’s depression he’s suffering from- not gaining any enjoyment from hobbies he used to love, feels so low and sad all the time, feels worthless, thinks he’s failed me in our marriage, says he doesn’t know if he loves me any more. I’ve worked out it’s been going on for quite a few months now rather than just my husbands character changing.

I’ve told him I’m not going anywhere and it’s an illness, he can try and push me away but I’ll be strong for the two of us etc.

How did you help your other half recover? What helped? What do I need to do? What did you do to stay strong? I hate seeing my wonderful husband like this. I miss my old DH so much.

Thanks for your help and advice.

He really needs to see his Dr, unfortunately theres not a huge ammount that you can do yourself if he refuses to seek help. Some self care ideas for him are exercise (releases the bodies own natural ADs) mindfulness, meditation and healthy eating. All these things can help but in my experience haven't been enough to cure depression on their own. Also it's worth seeing the Dr as there may be a physical cause for example low vitamin D is associated with depression and if he is defficient in this he may need a prescription strength suplement initially (this also made a huge difference to me) vit D deficiency is very common in the UK as we don't get the right type of sunlight to synthesise it Oct-March and often cover up or wear sun screen in what little sun we get in the summer.

Thank you so much for your reply. Interesting about the vitamin D, I’ll try that as a way to get him to see the doc. I’ve taken over the cooking so I can get more veg into his diet, although his appetite has decreased considerably recently.
Thank you for replying.

Vit D is incredibly difficult to get enough of from diet, I was even on a calcium and vit D suplement, but the ammount of vit D in it was minute compared to what the GP has reccommended I take (and that is after the initial super high dose to correct the deficiency) She did a blood test that found I was severely deficient along with a load of other blood tests for other things, but this was after I'd been on ADs a while and was still struggling with extreme tiredness all the time. Would be worth askung the GP about it as a starting point though.