How to equip yourself to help others fighting anxiety and depression

Do you know a teacher, nurse, parent, young adult, or elder adult?

Do you know someone who’s had to shift to working from home, working in a changing environment or under evolving guidelines, or is out of work?

The answer is yes. Therefore, we all need to be better prepared to walk alongside friends, family, and neighbors.

We’ve all experienced significant stress over the last two years, and many of our lives are being disrupted because of it. In fact, as of April 11, 2022, 38.3 percent of Americans reported symptoms of depression at least several days a week. And 45.6 percent reported symptoms of anxiety.

Unfortunately, you may not realize how ill-equipped you are to help others until it’s too late—until your young adult child or your best friend is falling apart before your eyes.

To make matters worse, there’s not enough professional help to go around. There wasn’t before COVID, and there certainly won’t be for a long time, if ever.

Even with the best of intentions, there’s a risk of doing harm without a little training. And if we do nothing, many will suffer in silence.

Christians, this is critical to loving our neighbors.

Two ways to help those who wrestle with anxiety and depression

We need to know how to create a safe place for our friends to open up.

We need to know what signs to look for and what questions to ask.

We need to know how to respond and when to encourage our friends to seek immediate help from someone better equipped.

And we need to know how to help them find the help they need—not only for their emotional well-being but also to address any tangible underlying causes of stress such as isolation, marriage or parenting troubles, financial challenges, etc.

Here are two great steps you can take today:

1. Join a live, online overview that explains the basics of relational emotional healing and helps you choose a path to further learning, if needed.
2. Browse helpfinder.org so you’re prepared to refer to it any time you need it. A deficit in any area of basic need adds to the emotional toll.

With tools like these, we’ll come out of COVID in better shape than we went in.

Let’s do this together!