Tips for Preventing Depression from Impacting Your Marriage

Depression can have an impact on a marriage however there are things that you can do to help prevent it from ruining your marriage. To help understand what type of impact depression can have on marriage and for tips on preventing depression from impacting your marriage, I have interviewed psychotherapist Cheryl Gerson, LCSW.

Tell me a little about yourself:
"I'm a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, a Board Certified Diplomate with the American Board of Examiners. I earned a certificate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the Greenwich Institute of Psychoanalytic Studies in New York City .

I've been in private practice in Manhattan for the past 21 years, working with individuals, couples, and group. I'm active in the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society and the New York Society for Clinical Social Work. I have been married for 45 years and am both a mother and a stepmother, and a happy grandmother.

I enjoy working with couples for many reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that when we're working on a relationship, we're working on enhancing function, rather than curing dysfunction."

What type of impact can depression have on marriage?
"This is a complex question. To begin, we need to understand that our brains are constructed to work unconsciously, as well as consciously. This means that our emotions can be passed from one person to another without conscious intention. So, if my husband is depressed, I 'pick up' a sense of depression. Then I may fight it in him (put pressure on him to "cheer up," for example) or I may act it out, myself (and then there are two of us!).

Depression in an individual shows up in daily habits: sleeping a lot or too little, eating too much or not enough, moping around, feeling worthless, guilty, sad, being unable to concentrate or make up one's mind. There can be thoughts of suicide, or just recurring thoughts about death. It's no fun living with a depressed person, so the partner tries to develop strategies to deal with it, often without even knowing what he or she is contending with. If you look at the symptoms above, it's easy to imagine that coping with any of them will exacerbate any stress already present in the relationship.

Short answer? If a marriage is working pretty well, depression in one of the partners will put enormous stress on it. If the marriage is already stressed, depression will severely exacerbate the problems."

What are some tips for preventing depression from impacting your marriage?
"First of all, if depression exists in either partner, there's no way that it will NOT impact the marriage. If a partner has an automobile accident, it will impact the marriage. Depression is a powerful stressor, and stressors affect relationships. But it doesn't have to destroy the marriage, either.

I would say that there are two parallel practices that will make an enormous difference in the impact of depression on the marriage.

1. Information gathering. Once the fact of depression is out in the open, through the diagnosis process, the more information either or both people can discover about the disease, the more effective they can be in dealing with it. Telling a person to 'cheer up' is worse than useless, but if the couple can talk about what actually does help, not only will the depression improve, but also the marriage will be opening up a new skill in communication.

2. Emotional separation through awareness. This is a process (more for the partner than the sufferer) of noticing, becoming aware of, and letting go of the emotions 'induced' by being in the presence of the depressed person. This looks like: I'm with my depressed partner, and I notice I feel 'down.' I ask myself, am I feeling sad about something that happened to me, or am I resonating with my partner? It doesn't matter which it is, because once I start looking at it this way, I have the opportunity to take care of myself: to calm myself, to cheer myself. I can accept the experience as something that simply happens, rather than something to be 'fixed.'"

What type of professional help is available for a couple that is having problems because of a spouse's feelings of depression?
"As a clinician, I have to say first that depression needs treatment, as a separate issue from the marital relationship. Studies show that the ideal treatment is a combination of antidepressant medication and 'talk' therapy. Cognitive-behavioral treatment (one form of 'talk' therapy) is often recommended. (You also may have heard about laughter therapy, and there are a number of first-person books out there you might find useful). That being said, the subject here is what can be done for the couple.

I certainly recommend couples counseling when a marriage is in trouble. A skilled counselor will be able to see how the partners are already collaborating on the problem, identify what isn't working, and, sometimes even more important, point out what IS working. When couples are battling depression, it can seem like nothing works! And yet, here they are, still together, and still caring for one another. An acknowledgment of assets can be a big first step out of the sinkhole.

It's not uncommon for a couple's counselor to be the first to identify the partner's depression, and start both parties on the road to a happier life.

The goal is for the partners to understand that depression is a disease (not a character flaw) and that how well they collaborate in the treatment of the disease will determine its effect on each of their lives, as well as the life of their marriage."

Thank you Cheryl for doing the interview on tips for preventing depression from impacting marriage. For more information on Cheryl Gerson or her work you can check out her website on www.cherylgerson.com or her blog at blog.cherylgerson.com .

Recommended Readings:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/288011/handling_depression_in_a_relationship.html?cat=72">Handling Depression in a Relationship

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5441884/postpartum_depression_an_interview.html?cat=70">Postpartum Depression

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2944934/treatment_for_depression.html?cat=70">Treatment for Depression