They can encourage treatment and provide information about available resources. Parents can also help their child fight the isolation often associated with depression by calling, visiting, and extending invitations to dinner, to a movie, or to spend a night or weekend. If the depression is interfering with the young adult's ability to function, parents can provide transportation to treatment and offer shelter, food, and money until the symptoms subside. If the young adult refuses treatment, parents have even fewer options. They can ask individuals whom the depressed person trusts and respects to intercede.
Friends are often more influential than parents.
Some people learn to live with depression. They can get up, go to work and do their chores. They do not know there is a better way to feel and are not motivated to get treatment. Without treatment, however, they can spend a lifetime feeling miserable and making those around them feel almost as bad. The Depressed Spouse Living with a depressed person is difficult under any circumstances.