I have a brother who suffers from depression. He is a husband, a father, and great friend - but his depression often leads him down roads that are not good for him in his role of father, husband and friend. It is painful to watch as he slips into deep bouts of sadness with nothing to help him. His wife can't help, his children can't help, and his friends can't help. We offer words of encouragement and still he suffers under this weight of sadness.

Then, out of the blue his sadness breaks and he is "normal" again until the next bout hits him. It can be very painful and exhausting to live with him in these situations. I simply cannot imagine what it is like to be his wife. How it must pain her to see the love her life in such constant anguish! How hard it must be to be a single parent when his sadness overtakes him and he is effectually incapable of parenting or being her husband!

Dealing with someone that is trapped in depression can be extremely difficult. We really want to help them in their moment of need but we still feel the weight of all our needs pressing upon us. We need them to be our spouse, we need them to love us, we need them to help us be a parent - but they aren't doing that and there depression is preventing them from being it to us.

Dealing with my brother I have found a few things particularly helpful for me and my family. I am not a clinical psychologist and I am not licensed to give marriage or family therapy, so please do not construe this as that type of advice. It is all just my opinion and could be terribly flawed.

(If you have a husband who is suffering from depression he needs to seek out and get the help that he needs to get better.  This may involve medication but it may also involve other things as well, such as improving their overall health by working out and eating well.)

Here is what I would suggest to do to help someone trapped in depression:

Often my brother's depression is marked by a great sense of hopelessness. He can't seem to see an end to the feeling that he has on the inside and this only increases his pain and torment. If your husband is experiencing depression, give him hope. Tell him that this is not going to last forever, because it will not.

If we can only love our spouse when things are going well, what type of love rests in our hearts?  Don't get me wrong, loving the depressed can be anything but easy.  Their entire life sucks and drains from us all that is easy about life.  Smiles fade and the wholesome gratifcation we can find in a mutual embrace is nowhere to be found.  They cease to feed us and force us to feel loved on our own.

This type of stress and strain will quickly cut to the core of our character and force us to come face to face with how weak or how strong our love its.  But even if our love appears weak to us now with the weight of his depression weighing heavily on our hearts we should not lament, but stand firm in the promises that we made - that in sickness and in health, that for richer or for poorer, that in times of plenty and in times of famine we will continue to love them.

Love is big, often bigger than us, and we cannot let circumstances keep us from our promise to love in all circumstances.

Probably the biggest thing that you can do to give them hope and to love them is to get them out of isolation and into the company of those that love them.  A wife can only take her depressed husband so far.  She has to reach out to her husbands friends and get them involved in the situation.

In most cases, she should just gently nudge her husband to go hang out with his friends or to talk to them about how he is doing.  In very sever cases she should outright go to them and ask them for their help.  This can sometimes feel very strange, but it is something that probably needs to be done to help your husband break free from his depression.

And finally, you should probably find some help for yourself.  Enduring your husbands depression in reserved silence is simply not going to happen!  Depression is a family disease and leaves everyone affected.  So you want to make sure that you get the help that you need to deal with the stress and strain of his depression.

Talk to close friends in confidence, get counseling if needed, talk to a pastor - just do something that will help you find peace and recharge your batteries.  Community kills depression while isolation just ends up feeding it in the end.

One thing you have to realize if you are looking for help for your depressed husband is that there is hope.  Things can get better.  You don't have to live like this forever.  Life can be more normal.