Ask Dr. Dombeck
Psychotherapy and Mental Health Questions

My mother has been really depressed for several years now. It has so fully engulfed her that she hasn't worked in the past 2 years. She sleeps a lot. She's angry all the time and takes it out on my grandmother (whom she lives with). I want her to understand that it's important to seek out some help in order to get things back on track, but she thinks it's just a case of the blues that she is going to snap out of. Recently she told me that she was going to kill herself--later she played it off like she was "kidding." I think that this is serious, and not something that she's going to "snap out of it." She is unemployed and I am a student, so we don't have the money to hire a therapist. I don't even know how to get her to speak with anyone. What should I do to help her?

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