As someone who had a clinical depression after a psychotic episode, which lasted a couple of years, I would say — it's complicated. I've actually maintained a

As someone who had a clinical depression after a psychotic episode, which lasted a couple of years, I would say — it's complicated. I've actually maintained a pretty healthy schedule, with regular swimming, intense hatha-yoga (more like gymnastics), spend a fair amount of time with people. At some point I've also became a workaholic. How I felt — pretty horrible, all those nice things (unhealthy attitude to work is not nice, of course) barely helped to maintain a thin veneer of my social persona. Basically, most of the people who interacted with me would not know that I'm depressed. I think there are a lot of people like that, just outer shells. I did not get medical help either in the form of therapy or drugs. In the hindsight, I think that depression could have been helped at least a bit by going to the good therapist. I had some issues with rage a couple years later, and going to psychoanalyst really helped me a lot. Oh, you know what also helped a lot? It may sound stupid, but at some point I've started going to piano lessons and it really was beneficial somehow.