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Persistent depressive disorder, often abbreviated as PDD, is the presence of symptoms of depression that have lasted longer than two years without periods of remission. This disorder can make it hard to lead a normal life and function at work or school, but with support from family and friends and the right treatment, you can learn to deal with PDD and begin taking back control of your life. Here’s how to understand persistent depressive disorder and how to cope with it so you can start living again.
Educate yourself
Before offering advice to a depressed person, it is imperative that you educate yourself first. The best way to do so is to read up on depression and its symptoms.
- What causes depression?
- What types of treatments are available?
- How else is it treated?
- Do the treatments even work?
- What's the quality of life for persistently depressed people like?
- What types of advice do you think they hear most often from neurotypical people?
- Do you think those tips are genuinely helpful, or are you speaking just to speak?
These are some of the questions you should be asking yourself before you engage in conversation with someone who’s suffering from depression. Depressed folks may also deal with rejection sensitive dysphoria, and your advice may be received as a personal attack on the persistently depressed person.
Know YOUR triggers
If you get upset easily or don't have much patience, you should hang up your care card now. Depressed people feel like (and see themselves as burdens, albatrosses, and downers). When you lose your temper or snap at them, it effects them differently and more severely than it would a normally-abled person.
It makes them feel even worse about themselves and more isolated from society. Instead of snapping at them for getting upset over something that is insignificant to you, try to understand why they are feeling so bad in that moment. Take some time to talk with them after they calm down if possible.
Ask what's wrong, if they're okay, etc. Ask if they even want to talk.
Change things up
People with persistent depressive disorder face an all-encompassing, negative view of the world that can make simple day-to-day tasks feel like impossible feats. One approach to coping with their symptoms is to try looking at things the way they do without bias, in order to understand what they go through on a daily basis.
Step out of your comfort zone
What you think they want might not be what they actually need. One major thing to remember is that your friend or family member who has PDD wants to feel heard and understood, rather than told what to do.
If you’re really having trouble finding something meaningful to say, focus on validating their feelings. When it comes down to it, all we really want is for people to care about us—and for them, that doesn’t always mean getting better. In fact, they usually feel as though your acceptance of them is directly connected to how sad they are that day. As their moods change, monitor your own moods as well, how often are you mentally frustrated or feel as though you're at your wit's end?
Talk about it
EX: Your friend who you don’t normally talk to, comes up to you looking terrible. She says she has some serious problems and feels so depressed she can’t get out of bed. This may be a sign that she has persistent depressive disorder (PDD). [In which case, try to] make plans with her [to talk about it].
This disease makes it hard for a person to enjoy life like they used to, or even at all but there are ways you can support your friend as they work toward getting better.
Don’t take their condition personally.
When dealing with depression, people often have trouble controlling their emotions and might lash out at others or feel angry about things that don’t really matter. Don’t let these mood swings bother you; instead, focus on helping them through their struggle by being supportive and encouraging them to seek help from a doctor or therapist.
Accept help from others
People experiencing depressive disorder can get caught in a downward spiral where they start to believe that everyone is more competent than them. The result of these feelings of inferiority can be difficulty in accepting help from others. It’s very important to remember that everyone needs help sometimes, even those who seem like they have it all together.
- Don't make your helping them contingent on their recovery.
- Don't invalidate delusions and paranoia induced by extreme anxiety.
- Don't question their trauma responses, just try to be supportive if they feel well enough emotionally to investigate the source of their trigger.
Support online communities
Unconventional-Advocacy.org is a small social support service aimed at peer and social support for those who are often dismissed by clinicians due to having a "psychological" history, being overweight, being female, being of Hispanic/Latino heritage or of African American heritage. Being intelligent enough to have Googled your issue before showing up at the doctor will sometimes upset their clinical/narcissistic mindset.
Lastly, and most depressingly, a lot of clinicians (especially in TEXAS) simply don't care what happens to depressed people because they can't see any physiological cause and refuse to discuss that depression can happen for no reason, to anyone at anytime and be wholly unresponsive to treatment.