25 year old severely depressed brother

[Guest_37503164]

I'm looking for some help supporting my extremely depressed brother. He is 25 years old and has struggled with his mental health his whole life. He lives at home with our mother and myself, and he finds it difficult to do normal things everyday. Examples of this include being out all night and sleeping all day, starting fights over very small things (he yelled at me for having a light on during the day), has no interest and does not participate in work or study, doesnt shower and doesnt eat.

He has been like this for approx 18 months. He wont accept help from family or friends and wont agree to take medication or seek professional help. This is effecting our family as it is currently the responsibility of me and my mum to support him however we can, but it is extremely draining for us emotionally. 

I'm looking for anyone who can offer advice, support or suggest someone who I can reach out to as I genuinely dont know what else I can do to help him. 

Thank you!

[smallwolf]

hello and welcome.

This sounds incredibly hard for you and your family. It's so kind of you to want to support your brother. Beyond blue has some page(s) that migth offer some guidance and the starting point is here...

https://www.beyondblue.org.au/get-support/support-someone

You probably know this but ... you can't force someone to get help, but you can offer support and encouragement. Take care of yourself too - supporting someone with depression can be draining.

Again, you can listen, encourage and support, but only as you are able. One thing you can try is to tell your brother about the impact this has on other members of the family (without making it sound like they are to blame). For example, let him know how much it concerns you to see him struggling etc.

[David35]

Is there any sibling rivalry? I had issues with my brother growing up because he felt inferior to me in certain ways. Mainly because I did so well at uni and was very achievement-oriented. He was a plodder. Twenty  years later and the roles have reversed for various reasons, but sometimes the family dynamic can have an affect.

Personally I found just having simple tasks to do each day helped. It gave me a sense of worth. It's a bit like when you're young, you're told to climb this big mountain. It's daunting. But life isn't like that. We climb small hills first. Work out if that one is for us or not, then attempt either a different hill or a bigger hill. I'm not sure what your brother enjoys doing, but maybe it's worth investigating. Everyone needs to have a hill to climb and stand at the top and feel proud of themselves. It sounds like you're brother doesn't have that.

[therising]

The warmest of welcomes to you as you face what sounds so incredibly challenging in so many ways.

With you mentioning your brother's struggle his whole life, I can't help but wonder whether there may be underlying issues going on that can lead to serious mental health issues. Could there be something that explains a lot of his struggles, starting from a young age? This is a really outside the square suggestion but I suggest it based on my own experience with my kids (21yo daughter and almost 19yo son).

While I'm not big on labels, I fully acknowledge how helpful they can be at times when it comes to certain revelations and ways forward. While my son ticked most of the boxes for a clinical diagnosis of high functioning autism a couple of years back, my daughter ticked a lot of the boxes a few weeks back leading to a clinical diagnosis of ADHD. There are some who tick a lot of the boxes for AuDHD (a combo). What a lot of these people will say is 'No wonder I was struggling so much for so many years, with so many things, including my mental health. It all makes complete sense now'. While something along these lines may be of no relation whatsoever to why your brother's struggling (could be purely trauma based instead), I thought it's something that's perhaps worth wondering about. The thing is...while we may never be able to get someone to go for an assessment for depression or anxiety etc, they may actually be interested in going for a different type of assessment, one that could help them make complete sense of why they tick the way they do. Btw, it was my daughter who pushed for the 2 assessments, as she could no longer tolerate some of the challenges her and her brother faced without finding some constructive way forward.

While I've managed depression myself over some decades, I can understand the feeling of 'I just can't function anymore (aka I'm completely dysfunctional), I give up'. Finding out why we can't function in the ways we're desperate to function can help make so much of a difference.