Family Role in Crisis Prevention: How Loved Ones Can Help Effectively

Helping a Loved One With Their Mental Health

When a family member is experiencing long-term mental health difficulties, supporting them is an ongoing responsibility. You might be: 

• Helping someone avoid relapse.
• Supporting a loved one with depression or anxiety.
• Staying alongside them as they experience symptoms for the first time. 

You might be worried about them hurting themselves, not addressing their symptoms, losing touch with reality, or isolating themselves from the outside world. Witnessing someone you care about go through these challenges is tough, and it can be overwhelming just thinking about how you can help. 

The following are important emotional support strategies for people with mental illness. While these are day-to-day forms of support, they can contribute to a longer-term crisis prevention strategy through consistent care and understanding.

Understand Their Condition

Whether you’re trying to support someone with bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, or another challenge, the first step to helping a loved one with their mental health is understanding their condition. 

When you can recognize their symptoms and know what causes them, their feelings and behaviors will make a lot more sense. This understanding can also make you better equipped to listen and assist your loved one.^[1][2] 

You can learn more about specific symptoms from the following links to our other articles, but here’s a brief overview of the different signs you might expect:

• A loved one with depression may have a persistent low mood, feelings of shame or worthlessness, and may have lost interest in things that they previously enjoyed.
• Those with bipolar disorder may experience extreme mood swings in which they either feel euphoric, restless, and unstoppable (mania) or intensely hopeless and suicidal (depression).
• Anxiety can cause intense physical sensations of panic and irrational thoughts of fear. Anxiety may drive someone to avoid certain activities, overwork themselves, or develop persistent physical symptoms.
• Schizophrenia involves disorganized thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. It can cause people to feel paranoid, withdraw from social relationships, and feel disconnected from their emotions.
• People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience unwanted anxiety-inducing obsessions. These obsessions drive compulsive behaviors, which provide temporary relief.

Mental health conditions can be triggered by many things, such as: 

• A significant life event.
• Family genetics.
• Drug use.
• Relationship difficulties. 

Even though symptoms can feel personal and cause conflict in families, it is important to understand them as parts of an illness. Remember that many symptoms are not fully within your loved one’s control.

Gently Suggest Professional Support 

There are many reasons why a loved one may not want to seek professional help. Some believe they can overcome mental health difficulties on their own, don’t recognize their severity, or fear the stigma of treatment.^[1] 

Telling someone you think they need professional treatment may be a difficult conversation, especially if you go in too firm. This can feel judgmental, so it’s important to suggest it gently. It may help to say that mental health difficulties are health conditions, not character flaws.^[1] 

Family intervention for mental health should also focus on your own feelings. For example, stating “I am worried” instead of labelling their behavior as “worrying” can be a small but significant way of reframing your language.

If they’re open to seeking help, inviting them to take a self-assessment can be a good first step.

Be Emotionally Supportive Without Fixing

Emotional support can involve listening, acknowledging someone’s struggles, being empathic, and even sitting in silence alongside them. It can sometimes be appropriate to give advice, but only if they ask for it.^[3] 

The urge to fix can put you in the role of rescuer, in which you feel compelled to “save” the person who feels helpless. While it feels like you’re helping, rescuing can feel intrusive to others and disempower them.^[4] 

Rescuing can unintentionally take away someone’s agency and ability to take risks, make decisions, and learn from consequences. An alternative way of helping is embodying the attitude, “I trust you can find your own way, and I’m here to support you.”^[4] 

Being emotionally supportive without fixing can look like:^[4] 

• Asking what will be helpful without assuming.
• Reflecting on their strengths and previous times they’ve overcome difficulties.
• Allowing them to express painful feelings without rushing to take them away.

Provide Practical Support

Another way you can help is by carrying out practical tasks that make your loved one’s life easier. You may know that they’re finding certain tasks, such as cooking, really difficult and offer to do it for them. You can also ask if there is something they’d like help with.^[1] 

Types of practical support that can be helpful include chores, grocery shopping, and creating a schedule for them.^[1] Try to strike a balance, because you don’t want to be overbearing and overly helpful, as this may feel disempowering for some people. Explain that you genuinely want to help, but don’t impose if they firmly refuse.

Encourage Positive Actions and Qualities

Positivity can sometimes be seen as a negative buzzword, particularly toxic positivity. This is when positivity is seen as excessive and where negative feelings aren’t allowed to exist at all. However, there’s absolutely room for positivity when supporting a loved one. 

For example, people with depression and other mental health conditions can be harsh and critical of themselves. Reminding them of their positive qualities won’t change their self-image completely, but it can be helpful to have a cheerleader who is vocal about their love for them.^[1][4] 

Positivity can also come in the form of encouraging a loved one to do certain activities. This can be something they used to enjoy doing or just something you can do together to help them relax. 

Though even simple activities can feel really tough for someone managing mental health difficulties (and you should never pressure someone to do them), your belief in their abilities can be a positive influence.^[1]