Depression

[MariaT]

Can someone offer some advice for me regarding depression?
I think my dear friend is suffering from a serious bout.
His wife is beside herself. He has been excluding himself from family time and activities, etc. He seems to want to be alone a lot. Will disappear for an entire day and not respond to anyone. Please note: we are 99% sure it's not another woman or drugs or anything like that. He takes no joy in his kids anymore. We have narrowed it down to him just being depressed. It's gone on for close to a year now. How can she get him to go seek treatment from a therapist? Any ideas? He refuses to acknowledge there is a problem.

[AshburnMom]

Hi nicellis! How is it I alway run into you on threads like this? ;) Sorry, I'm a therapist so we often run into each other on here.

If there is a family doctor, sometimes the person will listen to and/or talk to them about whatever's going on. It may well be depression but it may be other things as well. I can think of many reasons he could be acting this way. Short of testing his blood or urine, how could you be sure it isn't drugs or alcohol? And, unfortunately, there isn't a test for cheating. Does he have a history of depression? Or a family history of depression or other sort of mental illness? How old is he?

If he's not talking to her and disappearing for whole days w/o contact, couples counseling might be the place to start. It's obviously impacting their lives together.
But if he's not talking then the chances he'd be willing to go might be low. Either way, I'd recommend your friend get counseling of her own to help her figure it all out. Sometimes having an objective party who's not involved and doesn't know anyone else can really help.