While going through the process of rehabilitation, recovery, and healing, it is vital to have support and love from the people around the person. Mental illnesses and addictions affect a person’s personality, sociability, and personal life. When facing all these problems, it is vital for people suffering from depression and addiction to have this support system with them along their journey to healing and recovery.
Here are a few things the community and the people around the patients can do to help their recovery and heal from their adversity.
Show empathy and acknowledge their pain.
The show of solidarity with the person suffering from mental illnesses and depression can be the first step towards supporting them. This will help them feel association and curb the abandonment feeling most people in recovery feel. Show of empathy will also make them feel accepted, and they will be willing to turn their life around for the better – it will last longer with community empathy involved in the healing process.
The community should also acknowledge the reason behind addiction and depression. No one in this world is born with addiction or depression; the circumstances and unfortunate events traumatize humans and make them want to numb everything with harmful acts or drugs. This need to numb the pain and make it go away is why people abuse alcohol or drugs, which helps them forget about their pain for a moment. By acknowledging the pain, they have been through or going through; they will find an outlet for the pain to go away in a safe environment doing productive things rather than dangerous ones.
These love and trust-based methods will also help them find what treatment works best for them to become physically and mentally fit. Medically proven treatment, along with community support and love, will help the patient to recover and heal quickly with long-lasting results.
Honesty is the best policy but be kind.
Giving false reassurance to people suffering from depression or addiction might cause them to do more harm to themselves. So as a community, people should be more objective and give honest answers if anyone comes up to ask questions. Everyone knows that abusing substances is terrible and wrong, but we shouldn’t demonize the person using them because they may have a good reason behind it.
It should be taken into consideration that the people suffering from self-harm ideation from mental disorders and addiction have past trauma that they haven’t resolved yet and cannot find a way to settle. The community should come together and work out something to help and encourage substance abusers and mentally ill people to seek help.
Many depressed people and those with addictions feel isolated from the community. That is because the community often disowns or demonizes them, which shouldn’t be the case. Instead, the community should be kind to them and offer help and support to the individuals and their families so they can get out of this rough patch and return to living as healthy and happy people.
Show them a clear path and provide proper solutions.
Most of the time, when people fall into the chasm of addiction and depression, they stop doing their favourite activities, frequenting places they love, and becoming socially unavailable to their circle of friends and family. If and when these people come to you to ask for help, you, as a part of the community, should be able to help them find the right path and lead them to the proper facility or treatment centre for their recovery.
Going into recovery and starting the healing process is challenging if one is alone. So a helping hand from these patients’ community goes a long way in their journey to heal themselves for good.
To learn more about healing and recovery and how communities can help people battling depression and addiction, visit the website Recovery Consultants.
