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Dear Penny: My Daughter is Depressed and Not Working. How Can I Help Her?
Real Answers for Life's Money Challenges
My 35-year-old daughter is unemployed. She failed out of a graduate program two years ago after working on it for 10 years, and says she has been too depressed to work. She didn’t work during grad school, and in the time since, she had one job for about seven months and quit because she hated it.
I gave her financial support and she also used up an inheritance of about $500,000. I am reluctant to provide further support until she’s willing to work or (if she’s so disabled by her depression) to apply for disability. However, now she is mooching off an older sister and not speaking to me because I have insisted she get a job. She says she’ll either kill herself or live in a car when she has to leave her sister’s place. The sister set a deadline that is now four months away. I am panicking and don’t know what to do.
— At the End of My Rope
Dear End,
I’m sorry for the situation your family is going through. Mental health is a challenging issue and can be difficult on those with mental health concerns and those who care for them.
To support your daughter through mental illness, listen when she shares what she’s experiencing, take her seriously when she talks about things like depression and suicide, and, above all, remember she has to make her own decisions. The National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) shares resources for supporting a loved one, with the reminder that “support is not control.” “We can support and encourage our family members. We can’t, however, make their treatment decisions for them.”
(We shared some mental health resources privately when the letter came in, and we’ll share those at the bottom of this column, as well.)
A person is only eligible for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits if they’ve previously worked a job covered by Social Security. The program usually comes with a five-month waiting period, and the agency’s definition of “disabled” is quite strict. Filing a claim would likely require a medical diagnosis of depression and an extensive history of treatment, either of which may or may not be right for your daughter.
Neither you nor your older daughter need to feel obligated to provide financial support if you don’t feel able or you don’t feel like it’s the best way to help your daughter. If you want to help in other ways, here are some resources you can guide her toward:
If you or a loved one is considering self-harm or harm to others, call 988. This lifeline connects callers with a trained mental health professional immediately.
Dana Miranda is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance®, author, speaker and personal finance journalist. She writes Healthy Rich, a newsletter about how capitalism impacts the ways we think, teach and talk about money.
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