When someone suffers from a compulsive disorder or depressive illness, it frequently affects the other members of the family and indeed close friends as well. The onset of this effect may vary and it usually doesn’t happen overnight. Inexorably, however, the family members start to focus their attention on the sufferer rather than on themselves, with the inevitable result that the normal balance of family relationships becomes askew.

If you are concerned about someone you love, of course you will be prepared to put your own life on hold until the problem is sorted out. What we are here to do is to help you to get the help for the person for whom you are concerned and to facilitate ways in which you can all move ahead rather than continue to get stuck in the patterns of behaviour that can happen around someone who suffers from this sort of problem.

We have found from experience that when we can help family members to change their perceptions of the illness with which they are faced and gently change their own behaviour, it will often help the sufferer to seek the help that he or she needs. The bonus is that it will help you, as a family member or close friend, to improve the quality of your own life.