Self-help for wellbeing

What to do before you’re ready to ask for help

By Anoushka Ugar

I knew a seafarer once. He was not someone you’d expect to be struggling. When he was diagnosed with depression, he was told he couldn’t return to sea.

I often think about the months before his diagnosis, when something was clearly wrong but he kept hoping it would pass. For many seafarers, a diagnosis is frightening. Fears about medical fitness, contracts, or the career you’ve worked hard to build can make silence feel safer.

A diagnosis doesn’t create depression. It just gives it a name. This article is for that time before you’re ready to ask for help.

Depression doesn’t always look the way people expect. It isn’t always crying or sadness. Sometimes it’s losing interest in things you enjoy, constant exhaustion, trouble concentrating, sleeping too much or too little, or feeling numb. A good call from home or a decent day on board can lift your mood for a while. That doesn’t mean you’re not depressed. If these changes have lasted more than two weeks and are making life harder, take them seriously. The following suggestions could help boost your wellbeing.

Physical exercise can help to keep depression at bay. When getting out of bed can feel like hard work, start small. Walk a few laps around the deck. Stretch. Do anything that gets you moving for 20-30 minutes most days. That’s enough.

Depression tells you to wait for motivation, but recovery doesn’t work that way. Movement comes first; motivation follows.

Bask in the positive power of light. Spend 10 minutes on deck within an hour of waking to help regulate sleep and mood, especially when yours is already off.

Also, try to stay connected on board. Depression has a way of pulling you away from other people but try not to disappear completely. Share a meal, have a conversation, offer a hand with a task. You don’t have to explain what you’re going through; just staying connected, even in small ways, makes hard days a little less lonely.

Pen to paper
Could writing be for you? Most people try journaling once, stare at a blank page, and give up. The problem isn’t you. It’s not knowing where to start. Why not try just noting what happened on alternate days, or that thought that kept returning, and one piece of evidence for or against it. On the other day write freely for 15 minutes. Then on day 7, take a break.

Mindfulness has strong evidence for preventing relapse. Sit, breathe, gently return your attention when it wanders. It’s not about emptying the mind; it’s about just coming back to the present. Give it two weeks before deciding if this is for you or not.

Everyone says sleep matters. But depression doesn’t play fair with it. Staring at the ceiling for ten hours and still exhausted? Telling someone with depression to “sleep better” is like telling them to “just feel better”. If you can’t sleep, try following some of these suggestions: wake at the same time daily, go to your bunk for sleep only and leave it when you have been awake for 20 minutes, and skip alcohol before bed. If you are sleeping too much, cap your sleep at 8–9 hours with a fixed wake time, and add in morning exercises.

And a final word of advice: alcohol and depression feed each other. Alcohol is a depressant. It may ease distress for one evening, but over time it disrupts sleep, raises anxiety, and worsens symptoms. Don’t watch how much you are drinking, watch why. Notice if it’s to sleep, to feel less, or to get through the evening. That’s where it stops helping and starts being the problem.

These strategies can help, but not enough for everyone. Get professional help if symptoms drag on, worsen, if daily life starts to suffer, or if thoughts of self-harm show up. Asking for help isn’t failure, it’s just the next step.

The seafarer I spoke about at the beginning just wanted to go back to work. What he needed was someone to tell him that depression is treatable, and that asking for help doesn’t have to mean losing everything. This article is for anyone who needs to hear that.

Anoushka Ugar is a clinical psychology researcher and mental health writer, with postgraduate training in clinical psychology and a focus on mental health and wellbeing.