answer:You don’t say how old your friend is, or if there is any “obvious” reason for the depression (did something happen? is she on drugs that are making her more depressed?) I am not a professional, and I would assume that if she needs professional help, you will get it. However, understanding that this is a site of people just answering other’s questions—not necessarily professionally, I will give you my take on depression. The way I think of depression, as opposed to sadness for example, is that it is a kind of anger that, instead of being expressed outwardly toward the person she is angry with, is bottled up and is turned towards oneself. Anger turned inward becomes depression. Perhaps what you might be able to do while waiting for the professionals would be to talk with her about what she might be angry about—what might be making her so mad and also possilby so fearful of her anger, that she can’t express it, and it is making her depressed. Sometimes it is hard to even know what she is angry with—but if you go back to when she began to get depressed, you might be able to help her figure it out. Once she identifies what started it, and she can remember how angry whatever it was made her, then hopefully she can stay in touch with that anger, and point it to the source and not to herself.