How do you help a depressive?

[Tups]

I found myself helping a fantastically pretty young lady last night who had slashed her wrists. I took her in, my partner dressed her wounds and the ambulance was summoned. I accompanied her to hospital and sat with her until the friend she was staying with (my next door neighbour) dashed back from a business trip. She talked to me for an hour about how her mother didn't understand her depression and had thrown her out and banned her from seeing her siblings. She had slashed her wrists before and I'm afraid that, without serious help, she will do it again. What practical help is there out there for a young woman like this? She is well educated and indeed, used to run a successful business. She has lots of family issues: drunken, abusive father, 2 step fathers and loads more sh*t. (Of course, I've only heard one side of the story ...) I desperately want to be able to point her in the right direction. Psychotherapy hasn't worked. Surely, there must be someone out there who can help her - and others like her ...? Where can I tell her to go? At the moment, she is couch-hopping all over the country. Soon, she will have no friends left, willing to take her in. I feel so inadequate.

[Ethel]

It's not your place to feel inadequate here. It is the system that is failing, and of course, harsh as it seems, some depressives are in a cycle where they are frightened to get better.

I don't know where you are, but most areas have organisations like this:
http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/greybgreyyahoo couk/

Hopefully the hospital psychiatrists will be proactive

[zzxxee]

oh poor you what difference does it make if she was fantastically pretty or not she needed help you shallow person you

[obNOXious]

And he gave her help... perhaps he was just commenting that she was attractive, theoretically had everything going for her yet was still depressed.
That is the nature of depression, you can be rich, attractive, successful and still have that demon on your back, yet other people can't understand it because, in their eyes, you have it all. I didn't get the impression he was being shallow at all, I thought he sounded very worried actually.

[Robinia]

We don't know that Tups is a he do we?

Well done for trying to help but as Ethel said there's no need to feel inadequate. I knew someone like that many years ago, thankfully now that she's mature she appears to be content. Of course we never know just how happy anyone really is.

[bednobs]

sorry to have to say this but it is very hard to help people like this, who are so wrapped up in their own selves that they become very manipulative ( already she's making you feel inadequate!) and she will just pull you down with her. the other friends have the right idea, i' afraaid. Really, leave your neighbour to deal with it

[ladyalex]

Totally agree with bedknobs. This is her problem, not yours. She has to decide to help herself and until then, no one can. The hospital would not have turned her out if they thought she was a genuine suicide risk....at the very least they would have arranged follow-up the following day (yes, even over a weekend). At the moment she is preferring to abuse the good nature of her friends and of total strangers to taking responsibility for herself. I know it may sound harsh, but you just have to leave her be. If you start offering her advice, like telling her where to go get a bed for the night etc, when (not if) it doesn't work out, she will come back to you and make you feel responsible , so you will feel obliged to take her in and so it will go on.
Just another thought...she isn't abusing drugs or alcohol herself is she ?

[Tups]

As usual, obNOXious has the insight to understand where people are coming from! For your information zzxxee (that name sort of lulls me into a bored snooze!) I am a grandmother! When mentioning how pretty she was, I was indeed trying to make a point, albeit 'shallowly', that she had everything going for her! Thanks Ethel for the link. I shall investigate. Thanks also to everyone else; I am sure you are all right. I have enough problems of my own, without taking on those of a total stranger. I received a big bunch of flowers today from the lady in question, thanking me for my help. I shall assume that gesture draws a line under my involvement and I shall leave her to find her own way. Any advice I offer will be to the neighbour, and then only if he asks me.
It's really helped to read all your responses, even yours, zzxxee. Thank you.