In the last post, I described ways of talking about depression to my wife and close friends that have helped me get through to them. But there's another side to the story, as I’m sure you know from your own experience. You often face members of your family or some of your friends - the people you most want to be able to talk to - who don’t understand and won’t even try.

Worse than that, they might let you know they don’t believe your depression is real. They’ve already made up their minds that you’re either playing for sympathy or too weak-willed to “pull yourself together.”

Many with depression live with their parents, siblings or other relatives, not just when they’re young but often as adults as well. These may be the first people they look to for support because they’re with them day in, day out. Big changes in behavior can’t be missed. But they’ve learned that they can’t always count on them. There are so many stories in the blogs and forums about the disbelief, indifference, contempt or outright hostility within the family.

Some relatives refuse to believe that anything could be seriously wrong, especially in their children still living at home. "It’s just a phase of growing up. You'll get over it." Or if you’re older, they might say it’s a natural reaction to this or that bad event - "It takes time to get over it. Just hang in there."

Or they can’t imagine there is such a thing as mental illness. Instead they believe it’s weakness of character - even if they themselves have the same problem. I’m not sick, and you can’t be sick either.

So what do you do? I don’t have any magic answer, nor does anyone else writing about depression seem to have one. Although “experts” offer a lot of advice about the problem, ultimately it comes down to you and your sense of the people you hope will be supportive.

I was fortunate in finding support from my wife and a few others whose help I needed. But there were many other relatives, friends and colleagues who didn’t understand.

When I consider talking about depression to anyone, there are a lot of things going through my mind. Usually, I know perfectly well the reaction I'm likely to get, but I want to reach out to them even though it's clear I'll face rejection. Maybe, there's no choice. There's no else, and I've got to try. Especially with parents - I know they should care and be supportive, but what's the reality? Or employers - either they know I’m ill, or they think I’m incompetent when job performance falls off. I may get nowhere with them, but I’ve got to try.

The best thing I may be able to do is adjust my expectations, depending on what I already know about the person. If I don't know what they think about depression, I'll try to find out before launching into my own problems with them.

It may seem obvious to go over these things, but whenever I’m deep in depression, I need to force myself to concentrate. A simple list always helps.