If a partner suffers from severe depression, the other must take on a multitude of tasks on their behalf: caring for the children, household chores, providing for the family, maintaining external contacts, and above all, supporting the sick partner with understanding. A strain on the whole family? Here, person-centered counseling for relatives can help. Based on the experiences of the relatives, it is shown how to inform them about the illness, how to identify doubts, worries, anger, and exhaustion, and how to handle crisis situations. Content: Clinical picture of depression: clinical definition, diagnostic issues, symptoms and course, prevalence, epidemiology, and risk factors, causes and treatment, conclusions for counseling relatives. How relatives perceive depression: depression as a partnership crisis, expression of conflict.