Supporting a family member with depression can be stressful. As a parent, seeing your child experience a time of crisis or difficulty can be extremely challenging. Supporting a child through these difficult times can leave you feeling helpless, distressed and drained. This often occurs against the backdrop of general life stressors, which in themselves can be sufficiently difficult to manage and can result in you feeling burnt out.
How can this stress affect us?
We can experience a range of emotions:
- Low mood, apathy
- Anxiety
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Hopelessness
- Reduced confidence
We can find our usual activities more difficult due to:
- Poor concentration
- Memory difficulties
We can find ourselves behaving differently:
- Being withdrawn
- Feeling agitated & irritable
- Experiencing poor sleep
- Reduced desire to socialise or partake in everyday tasks
Aware offers support services for adults aged 18 and over, including adults who may be supporting a child with a mood related condition and are looking for understanding, information or signposting. Aware also provides a range of education services to include positive mental health programmes which are delivered to adults and senior cycle students at secondary schools nationwide.
For further information about the mental health of a young person go to www.jigsaw.ie.
