1. Prepare for bad times when all seems well, use your imagination to visualize depressive episodes and see yourself functioning perfectly.
2. Get involved in the treatment process – medications, exercises, therapy sessions etc. See it as our problem.
3. Accentuate the positive. Stimulate happy feelings when ever you can, engage in joyful experiences.
4. Banish judgment – depression is not a result of weakness. Relinquish stigma or blame. This is a medical condition like Diabetes.
5. Listen more than you talk and show that you are listening.
6. Be the hero. Everyday ask what can I do to make my spouse a happier person today.
7. Boost the self – esteem of your spouse – compliment – keep spirit high as possible. Dwell upon happy thoughts.
8. Overlook some flaws and mistakes. Wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook.
9. Carry around a bottle of forgiveness and sprinkle it all around. Hold no negative emotions. Marriage is not the place to foment revenge or register wrongs or nurture animosities.
10. Treat every encounter as an opportunity to help him or her to feel better.
11. Look at depression as a continuum, from feeling a bit sad to frank clinical depression with suicidal thoughts or ideas. Know where your spouse fits on a scale of 1 to 10 so you can take the appropriate action.
12. Even if your partner is depressed, you generate a feeling of happiness inside – happiness is a decision.
Give The Gift of Happy
* Did you know that HAPPY is the new normal? * Give the gift of happy and help to create a better world. * There