How Mental Illness Affects Loved Ones

And what to do about it

Photo by Dustin Belt on Unsplash

In these pages I have written extensively about mental health from my own insight, not as a professional but as one with lived experience and knowledge of those with lived experience. Take it for what it’s worth and seek professional guidance. I have written about how to care for someone with a mental illness, the reality that you may not need a therapist, the role desire plays in recovery, and flawed ways of understanding mental health. My goal is not to act as a therapist, but to continue the work I started in On Getting Out of Bed, offering what I hope is wise counsel for those personally struggling with mental affliction or those helping others who are suffering. One topic I haven’t adequately addressed is the affect mental illness has on loved ones.

When you suffer from a mental illness, you’d like to keep it in a nice tidy box, private and personal and irrelevant to those around you. And to some extent, it is private and personal. You can’t communicate your suffering fully to anyone else, so it is yours. But it is not just yours. It affects your loved ones. I write about this some in On Getting Out of Bed, the reality that people will go on needing you even when you feel like you have nothing to offer them. But it’s more than that. Your neglect, depression, anxiety, moodswings, isolation, incapacity, irritation, and hopelessness disrupt the lives of those you around you, particularly those you live with. Even when your behavior is the direct result of an illness outside of your control, it still burdens others. The result is that once you make it to a period of recovery, the damage of the illness lingers in you and your loved ones. As Eliot wrote, “People change and smile, but the agony abides.” It abides for the individual with the condition and those who love them.