Helping Someone With Clinical Depression: What I Learned From a Friend Who Committed Suicide

When my youngest child was four days old, my best friend became severely depressed and committed suicide. She was thirty years old, a wife, and the mother of two little boys. For months, she had been harder to reach on the phone, although when I did get in touch with her, she seemed fine. About two weeks before her suicide, she told me she was depressed and had been seeing a psychiatrist. I reminded her of all the good things she had in her life, and how she should snap out of it.

That week, I invited her to a craft class, which I thought would get her out of the house and help somehow. She was very reluctant but when I told her I had already paid the fee for both of us, she agreed. I went to pick her up, and she seemed very quiet. We had a nice time at the class, and she seemed to perk up a little. As we walked across the parking lot, I saw a woman we both knew a few cars down. I called out to her, and she walked over to talk to my friend and me. When we got in the car, my friend was very mad. She wanted to know why I had called that woman over and told me she didn't want to talk to anyone. On the way home, I told her if she was going to get over depression, she had to help herself, make herself do things even when she didn't feel like it. She had to "push through."

Honestly, at that time, with what limited information I knew about depression, I thought I was being helpful. One morning she woke up, cleaned her house, bought groceries, prepared five meals for the freezer, took her husband lunch, sent the kids to her mom's, and went into the garage, closed the doors, and started the car. A neighbor passing by found her.