Here’s an interesting article I found on the website SheKnows.com by Anne Sheffield about how depression affect couples. To read “Depression Fallout: The Impact of Depression on Couples” click here.

Here are some excerpts:

Ask most people to conjure up the image of someone who is depressed and they will envision a huddled figure sitting passively in the corner and murmuring about how sad he or she feels. No wonder, since most lists of depression’s symptoms begin with “a persistent sad, ’empty,’ or anxious mood,” followed by “loss of interest or pleasure in ordinary activities, including sex.”

While these symptoms do describe how depression sufferers feel, they are not matched by the expected passive behavior. Indeed, the depressed often become unpleasantly aggressive, argumentative, and faultfinding without provocation. This disconnect causes innumerable depression-clouded relationships to unravel and become mired in conflict and misunderstanding. When previously attentive, warm, demonstrative partners turn irritable, distant, and thoughtless, mates are unlikely to attribute the change to a psychiatric illness, even though they may have read about depression in the abstract.
Since the true culprit is an illness that afflicts no less than nineteen million Americans at any given moment, why don’t depressed partners speak up and explain what is going on in their minds and hearts? Surely anyone whose life has turned inexplicably gray and hopeless would choose to talk about it with his or her intimates, thus paving the way for answers and solutions. But that is not depression’s way. Indeed, depression’s most insidious trait is the ease with which it seduces its sufferers into blind alleys signposted Lousy Relationship, Bad Karma, Weak Character, Stress Overload, and other misleading names