From India: I have known my best friend for the last 14 years and she is 50 and i am 36. She has two grown up daughters. She is a person who worries a lot and takes all things seriously even when her husband teases her. As her husband lived abroad she lived in her moms house, She did have a lot of troubles with her husband and even now he is the general Manager of an estate she continues to live in her moms place as she does not want to go and live with him.
In the years 2015 and 2016 she has constantly worried and she made herself get mentally disturbed so much that the doctor put her on medication and she became alright both the times. In 2017 she kept perfectly fit and was fine and nothing happened to her.
At the start of this year she started worrying again. Both the times she had major decisions to take and she started loosing sleep. Her parents who are old along with her sister in law took her to the doctor because she was showing the same symptoms as she did before.
The doctor gave her medicine and she read something on the paper which said she did not like. She also did not like the doc doing an evaluation with her. she started believing what was written on the paper the medical definition and living it. She completely stopped doing all the work she did at home and started staying bed, Talking about death, spoke to her kids about death etc. we did everything positive but she did not do anything, Just blamed us and every one is at fault other than her.
Her daughter has scored 89 in her 12th grade and got into the best college bangalore . But she wants her dd to go to another college just because she does not know what to do as her daughter is grown up . She did tell me to speak to her dd but i did not because of personal reasons and now she blames me for her daughter being in this college and in different ways she says i am fault and this goes on like every day for the past 15 days every day i need to listen to her that i am at fault . she says i asked you for help you did not give it and things like that .
What am i to do? I used to send her a positive quote every morning to make her feel good but instead i get nagged at . I dont feel like doing that too . How do i put a stop to this … Making her better is beyond me . I have explained it to her saying that its not my fault many times but i am fed up that it depresses me
You are correct. Making her better is beyond you. You have nothing to apologize for. It was also healthy for her daughter to remove herself from the situation.
From your letter, it seems to me that your friend may suffer from recurring major depression. When in an episode, she sees the world through gloomy glasses. Nothing anyone says is going to have positive impact.
Your friend needs to accept that she probably does need to take medication for the rest of her life and she does need to have on-going mental health support from professionals. As long as she is competent, you can’t make her do either. As an adult, she has the right to make her own decisions, even bad decisions.
Sadly, this kind of situation sometimes results in further deterioration. At that point, she may be willing to ask for help or her husband may have to consider signing her into hospital to save her life. If you can, I do suggest you share your letter and this response with her husband. As her spouse, he has more legal rights and perhaps more personal leverage than you do.
I wish you well,
Dr. Marie
