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How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercis

How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercise and outdoor time - good sleep hygiene - regular healthy social interactions - eliminate environmental stressors (job/financial stress, relationship stress, noise pollution, etc) Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under your control, but ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try fix them if you want your situation to improve, since nobody else will.

xnorswap 9mo ago
The trouble is, this reads like "Just don't be depressed", since this is almost effectively a list of (anti-) symptoms of depression.
- jdiff 9mo ago
  And the ones that aren't simply "don't be depressed" are a lottery for anyone, even those not suffering depression. In the US, current projections are for 300 new jobs per state per month this year. Even accounting for retirees and deaths, last I looked at the numbers, there have been 2M more new additions to the workforce (people turning 18) than there are new jobs for those new additions, all competing with the large unemployed and laid off populations. It's similarly often not easy to solve relationship stressors or noise pollution.
  - weatherlite 9mo ago
    I agree we are headed into very unstable times, all the more reason for people to exercise. The stress relief effect is magical, and if you do it outside you get some fresh air and vitamin D. Exercise isn't a magic cure to make everyone honkey dorey but I do believe it should be seen as one of the best (and free) tools we have to maintain mental health.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  No, it isn't like "Just don't be depressed", I know it's very difficult for people to get all of those combined, that's what I said you should strive to get all of them if you want to cure your depression. SSRIs or exercise won't make your financial or relationship issues go away so you'll still be depressed unless you can fix all the issues bothering you.
  - Sharlin 9mo ago
    The problem is that depression by definition makes it 100x harder to do any of those things.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      Well yeah, but you gotta start somewhere, and it's not gonna get better if you drink cola, beer everyday and stay up until 2AM watching netflix.
      - rincebrain 9mo ago
        I think GP's point is that "just do it" shows a lack of understanding that an inability to "just do X" is often a symptom of depression that leads to people not talking about it, because people who haven't experienced it think you must be lying about having decided to do something and not actually then doing it. Consider: there was a study about a guy who was paralyzed from the waist down, who got an implant to bypass the injury, and with a year+ of walking with the implant, could eventually walk to a limited extent without the implant.[1] This suggests walking can be used to treat loss of ability to walk. Unfortunately, there's a catch-22 there... ...and so too with inability to make yourself do anything. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - jmye 9mo ago
        > Well yeah, but you gotta start somewhere Wait, I thought those things solved depression? Why are you hedging now? Did your initial analysis suck, and you're just now realizing it? Are you figuring out that maybe this is slightly more complex than "just be happy" and that maybe you're not the only person on the planet who's ever thought about this?
- taneq 9mo ago
  This is always what leaps out at me with this kind of “live better be happier” article. Yeah, if you’re sleeping well, eating well, working out regularly, spending quality time with friends, and have a healthy work life balance, you probably aren’t depressed. Might there be some possibility, perchance, that this is because any single one of those factors is almost impossible when in the pit of despair, let alone all of them at once? It’s like saying glasses cause short sightedness because hey, you almost never see someone with good eyesight wearing glasses.
bananaflag 9mo ago
> good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants How does one get rid of the excitement of the expectation of eating chips or drinking cola etc?
- adrian_b 9mo ago
  Hard?
- celeritascelery 9mo ago
  GLP-1
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  You stop buying them during your weekly grocery shopping.
- megaloblasto 9mo ago
  It sounds like you're saying that low will power leads to depression.
- coffeefirst 9mo ago
  You replace the thing you want to quit with a better thing. Try tea and seltzers, not because they’re healthy but because they’re interesting. There’s an infinite range of teas. And learning to cook changed my life. I get annoyed with almost all delivery now because I can do better.
  - bananaflag 9mo ago
    I started drinking herbal teas some years ago, I heavily enjoy hibiscus and ginger because of their strong taste, to a lesser degree also cinnamon, licorice and peppermint, but most teas seem very bland.
- gowld 9mo ago
  You need to educate/brainwash yourself with operant conditioning that junk food makes you sick and good food makes you feel good. The problem with depression in particular, though, is that self-harm--seeking behaviors is also a symptom, so that brainwashing can backfire.
staticassertion 9mo ago
I think this is true, but oof that's a heavy list. For one thing, food, alcohol, drugs, and stimulants, all have addictive properties that are almost certainly comorbid with depression. Dropping those is rough. Exercise is perhaps one of the easier ones but, personally, I've found it incredible to reflect on how absolutely bad my childhood "gym" classes were. At no point did we actually... go to a gym. That was never normalized for us. We sort of just learned how to do jumping jacks when we were told to, that sort of thing, and it was all structured for us. There was no habit forming, no "how to do this once there's no one around to structure it for you". In my experience, people who go to the gym get "brought in" by someone in their life who can help them build that structure. For someone missing it, well, you're truly on your own in a rather stressful environment. Sleep hygiene is good but, again, I suspect tricky here. Regular social interactions, another heavy lift! What do you do to build up a network of people in your life? Social structures don't just magically appear, and once again, they're usually just handed to you for most of your life and once those fall away you're in quite a spot trying to recover or build anew. I think the environmental stressors may be the roughest, hard to say. Eliminating financial stress is something that can take decades. Noise pollution? That's really quite out of my control. All of these are great things to work on but I suppose my read of them is "wow, being depressed seems really fucking hard if you have to do these things to get out of it".
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  > "wow, being depressed seems really fucking hard if you have to do these things to get out of it". Yeah IT IS hard, I didn't say it's easy, I just said what you need to not be depressed. Whether everyone can get all those is another issue. The thing is that in the case when you don't have all of these, adding unhealthy habits on top, doesn't make your situation better.
  - staticassertion 9mo ago
    Yes, sorry, I think other posts are quite critical of yours so maybe you think this was me trying to be like "your post is bad". I think you're right (though I think that medication and therapy are often critical to help kickstart healthier habits, and it's worth noting how heavy a lift those things are), but it is just notable to me how hard those things are. I am not depressed, thankfully, because if I had to rebuild a social life or go to the gym to fix myself I'd be fucked.
Aaargh20318 9mo ago
I can't remember where I read it, but it always stuck with me: most cases of depression can be solved with a one-time deposit of $20 million in the patient's bank account. A lot of the time, what is diagnosed as depression is actually a very valid reaction to being in a shitty situation. I myself ended up at a psychiatrist due to being stuck in a shitty job with me being too exhausted and anxious to do anything about it. What eventually 'cured' me wasn't any of the sessions with the shrink but being laid off in a company restructuring with a nice severance package that allowed me to take a couple of months to decompress and look for a job that was a better fit.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  >most cases of depression can be solved with a one-time deposit of $20 million in the patient's bank account. Yes, but actually not always. If you have someone overweight because they're only eating pizza, cheetos and cola everyday and you use a magic wand to give them Thor's physique, how long will their new physique last with their diet until they devolve back into a slug monster? Money tends to run out, very quickly for some people. If you aren't able to keep your life in order when you're poor, you'll probably squander it all quickly too if you win the lottery. Like a friend of mine said "Thank God nobody gave me a million dollars when I was a drug addict, I would have OD's in a day". People with self destructive tendencies don't need 20 million dollars, they need therapy, a stable job, and a loving caring community, something that fewer people have nowadays.
  - alphawhisky 9mo ago
    This is a pretty poor take. Everyone knows that it's easier to maintain fitness/muscle than build it. The same is true with money, it's much easier to coast or make moves financially when you have headroom. There's a type of financial self-sabotage people often commit when they're in an "unwinnable" situation called Doom Spending. I feel like the same psychological principles that convince a person in debt to finance their groceries also makes them lean into eating when overweight, lean into laziness when unemployed, etc. They always say that the hardest part is starting, but when it comes to money, fitness, employment, not everyone starts from the same place, and without being/having been at rock bottom you can't speak to the perspective of getting out of it. Agreed that a holistic approach is the only proper way though.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
wvh 9mo ago
You just described causes of depression, like divorce, social isolation and being unemployed. I know there are people that can feel free in a place as horrible as a concentration camp, but most of us have some basic needs that have to be met to feel OK and have some hope. Some people have actual neurotransmitter imbalances, but many of us just have monkey brains that don't know how to deal with (real, abstract) modern-day stressors that trigger a fight-or-flight response.
vrosas 9mo ago
This is exactly the kind of list that is both not true (solving depression is not a checklist) and COMPLETELY unhelpful to anyone actually dealing with depression. It's like saying "just make more money" to someone with financial struggles.
- weatherlite 9mo ago
  I see your point but I think there's nuance here First of all exercise should be seen as one of the first lines of defense against not only depression but chronic health problems (which also lead to depression). So you shouldn't wait until you are depressed to start exercising - ideally it is something you do all the time. Secondly - someone who's depressed is not keen on most things - including talking to a therapist , yet we still encourage them to do it. If you have the will power to pay hundreds of dollars a session to talk to a complete stranger, in theory you may have the willpower to walk birskly for 150 minutes a week. As a society we should simply encourage everyone no matter what age or state of mind to do that.
goodpoint 9mo ago
AKA "just don't be depressed"
z3t4 9mo ago
- lower your expectations If you set your goal too high you will be sad all the time. Choose a goal that you would be happy with but make sure it's a realistic goal!
basisword 9mo ago
Every time this comes up the comments are the same. Just don't eat crap, just go to the gym, just make sure you get good sleep. It shows a total lack of understanding of depression. Of course these things work - and if people weren't depressed they might be able to try and do them. But when you have severe depression you literally have zero motivation. None. You suddenly can't sleep. You can barely get yourself out of bed. That's why things like pills are useful because they can help you get to the point where you can take the steps necessary to get your life into a state where it's less conducive to depression. >> ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try fix them if you want your situation to improve, since nobody else will. No. This is why doctors and psychologists etc exist. Not everything is fixable by you. Sometimes you need help from other people and blaming the depressed person for being depressed is fucking idiotic.
randusername 9mo ago
> How to solve most cases of depression Tread carefully friend, I agree this is a good list to _prevent_ the most common forms of depression, but some will think you are framing major clinical depression as a personal failing. Some people slide into a hole of their own making. Others get thrown into the abyss by external factors. Grief, trauma, abuse, crises of repressed identity, poverty and poor prospects. Life can be brutal. I highly, highly recommend The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (Solomon) for anyone that is interested in a comprehensive view of depression.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  >Some people slide into a hole of their own making Others get thrown into the abyss by external factors. Yes, true, a lot of the times it is from external factors (ask me how I know), but what people miss is that even in that case, it's still on you to get yourself out since SSRIs and therapy session won't fix the situation you fell into, nor will anyone else come to get you out, unless maybe you're lucky enough to have an incredible family, community or support network. It's still your responsibility to get yourself out even when your situation is not your fault. That's the sad truth about life, you have to play the hand you're dealt, instead of being depressed you've been dealt a bad hand. It's not fair, but that's how it works.
  - randusername 9mo ago
    From one internet stranger to another, both vaguely alluding to heavy things in our lived experience, I respectfully invite you to consider a "yes and". Yes, we all must accept responsibility in changing our circumstances. _And_ we all can accept responsibility for helping others do the same. Some people need to hear the first part that you shared. Others need to hear the the second part that I am sharing.
jmye 9mo ago
> How to solve most cases of depression What absurdly thoughtless, shallow nonsense. What, specifically, is your background in depression research, that leads you to believe you've completed solved it for everyone? I'll wait. I'm sure it's fucking extensive.
Fricken 9mo ago
One indicator that you might be falling in to depression is that you struggle to find the motivation to maintain those healthy practices.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
Insanity 9mo ago
The last one you list is hardest to fix. And that in turn causes the others. For example, if you have a stressful job, you might: 1. Sleep less (job stress or long hours keeping you up) 2. Eat less healthy (coping mechanism for job stress, and it’s faster) 3. Have less time for the higher quality social interactions.
tpoacher 9mo ago
How to solve most cases of paraplegia: - Regular long walks at the park - Climb stairs whenever possible instead of using the lift - Good foot care - Engage in social exercise like running clubs - Wear good quality footwear, suitable for the activity that you're engaged in. Of course, not all paraplegics can use their feet, but ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try to improve leg strength to the point of overcoming paraplegia, by doing the things that would have helped in improving leg strength, if only you could walk. /s (tbf, not fully disagreeing per se, and all analogies are flawed, but the above sarcasm is to point out that this model is overly simplistic. And it can lead to hidden but very real unconscious bias and discrimination once words like "responsibility" is thrown into the mix)
butlike 9mo ago
I don't agree with the elimination of things. Removing things can be its own source of tribulation. I agree on all other parts, though
GuB-42 9mo ago
Sounds like a catch 22 to me. All of what you describe besides environmental stressors are symptoms of depression. So, to solve depression, you must first solve depression. And even the environmental stressors are something we could work with as a society though welfare, environment regulations, etc... But how people react to them is also a symptom. There are depressive people with the best of situations, and people who enjoy life in the worst of situations. What often strikes me in documentaries about warzones, places of repression and extreme poverty or crippling diseases is how "normal" people seem to be, they enjoy themselves as if everything was fine. So, while reducing environmental stressors work, it is not the end of it. The take may be that treating the symptoms of depression could work in treating the root cause, a positive feedback loop. But if done through lifestyle change, unfortunately, the treatment is coercion, you can't rely on the willpower of people who have none because of the disease.
bulbar 9mo ago
That's a dangerous take. People that suffer from a clinical depression oftentimes won't be able to do any of these things and this has nothing to do with responsibility and everything with suffering from a depression. From what I have learned from friends working in the field, meds often work as an enabler, allowing people to do some of the things that are known to improve their condition further. If you think you suffer from depression, don't keep trying to "just buckle up", don't keep trying to "just need to take responsibility". Go talk to professionals, therapists and/or psychiatrists. Mental disorders do things to a person outside of their control.

xnorswap 9mo ago

The trouble is, this reads like "Just don't be depressed", since this is almost effectively a list of (anti-) symptoms of depression.

jdiff 9mo ago
And the ones that aren't simply "don't be depressed" are a lottery for anyone, even those not suffering depression. In the US, current projections are for 300 new jobs per state per month this year. Even accounting for retirees and deaths, last I looked at the numbers, there have been 2M more new additions to the workforce (people turning 18) than there are new jobs for those new additions, all competing with the large unemployed and laid off populations. It's similarly often not easy to solve relationship stressors or noise pollution.
- weatherlite 9mo ago
  I agree we are headed into very unstable times, all the more reason for people to exercise. The stress relief effect is magical, and if you do it outside you get some fresh air and vitamin D. Exercise isn't a magic cure to make everyone honkey dorey but I do believe it should be seen as one of the best (and free) tools we have to maintain mental health.
joe_mamba 9mo ago
No, it isn't like "Just don't be depressed", I know it's very difficult for people to get all of those combined, that's what I said you should strive to get all of them if you want to cure your depression. SSRIs or exercise won't make your financial or relationship issues go away so you'll still be depressed unless you can fix all the issues bothering you.
- Sharlin 9mo ago
  The problem is that depression by definition makes it 100x harder to do any of those things.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    Well yeah, but you gotta start somewhere, and it's not gonna get better if you drink cola, beer everyday and stay up until 2AM watching netflix.
    - rincebrain 9mo ago
      I think GP's point is that "just do it" shows a lack of understanding that an inability to "just do X" is often a symptom of depression that leads to people not talking about it, because people who haven't experienced it think you must be lying about having decided to do something and not actually then doing it. Consider: there was a study about a guy who was paralyzed from the waist down, who got an implant to bypass the injury, and with a year+ of walking with the implant, could eventually walk to a limited extent without the implant.[1] This suggests walking can be used to treat loss of ability to walk. Unfortunately, there's a catch-22 there... ...and so too with inability to make yourself do anything. [1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - jmye 9mo ago
      > Well yeah, but you gotta start somewhere Wait, I thought those things solved depression? Why are you hedging now? Did your initial analysis suck, and you're just now realizing it? Are you figuring out that maybe this is slightly more complex than "just be happy" and that maybe you're not the only person on the planet who's ever thought about this?
taneq 9mo ago
This is always what leaps out at me with this kind of “live better be happier” article. Yeah, if you’re sleeping well, eating well, working out regularly, spending quality time with friends, and have a healthy work life balance, you probably aren’t depressed. Might there be some possibility, perchance, that this is because any single one of those factors is almost impossible when in the pit of despair, let alone all of them at once? It’s like saying glasses cause short sightedness because hey, you almost never see someone with good eyesight wearing glasses.

bananaflag 9mo ago

> good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants How does one get rid of the excitement of the expectation of eating chips or drinking cola etc?

adrian_b 9mo ago
Hard?
celeritascelery 9mo ago
GLP-1
joe_mamba 9mo ago
You stop buying them during your weekly grocery shopping.
megaloblasto 9mo ago
It sounds like you're saying that low will power leads to depression.
coffeefirst 9mo ago
You replace the thing you want to quit with a better thing. Try tea and seltzers, not because they’re healthy but because they’re interesting. There’s an infinite range of teas. And learning to cook changed my life. I get annoyed with almost all delivery now because I can do better.
- bananaflag 9mo ago
  I started drinking herbal teas some years ago, I heavily enjoy hibiscus and ginger because of their strong taste, to a lesser degree also cinnamon, licorice and peppermint, but most teas seem very bland.
gowld 9mo ago
You need to educate/brainwash yourself with operant conditioning that junk food makes you sick and good food makes you feel good. The problem with depression in particular, though, is that self-harm--seeking behaviors is also a symptom, so that brainwashing can backfire.

staticassertion 9mo ago

I think this is true, but oof that's a heavy list. For one thing, food, alcohol, drugs, and stimulants, all have addictive properties that are almost certainly comorbid with depression. Dropping those is rough. Exercise is perhaps one of the easier ones but, personally, I've found it incredible to reflect on how absolutely bad my childhood "gym" classes were. At no point did we actually... go to a gym. That was never normalized for us. We sort of just learned how to do jumping jacks when we were told to, that sort of thing, and it was all structured for us. There was no habit forming, no "how to do this once there's no one around to structure it for you". In my experience, people who go to the gym get "brought in" by someone in their life who can help them build that structure. For someone missing it, well, you're truly on your own in a rather stressful environment. Sleep hygiene is good but, again, I suspect tricky here. Regular social interactions, another heavy lift! What do you do to build up a network of people in your life? Social structures don't just magically appear, and once again, they're usually just handed to you for most of your life and once those fall away you're in quite a spot trying to recover or build anew. I think the environmental stressors may be the roughest, hard to say. Eliminating financial stress is something that can take decades. Noise pollution? That's really quite out of my control. All of these are great things to work on but I suppose my read of them is "wow, being depressed seems really fucking hard if you have to do these things to get out of it".

joe_mamba 9mo ago
> "wow, being depressed seems really fucking hard if you have to do these things to get out of it". Yeah IT IS hard, I didn't say it's easy, I just said what you need to not be depressed. Whether everyone can get all those is another issue. The thing is that in the case when you don't have all of these, adding unhealthy habits on top, doesn't make your situation better.
- staticassertion 9mo ago
  Yes, sorry, I think other posts are quite critical of yours so maybe you think this was me trying to be like "your post is bad". I think you're right (though I think that medication and therapy are often critical to help kickstart healthier habits, and it's worth noting how heavy a lift those things are), but it is just notable to me how hard those things are. I am not depressed, thankfully, because if I had to rebuild a social life or go to the gym to fix myself I'd be fucked.

Aaargh20318 9mo ago

I can't remember where I read it, but it always stuck with me: most cases of depression can be solved with a one-time deposit of $20 million in the patient's bank account. A lot of the time, what is diagnosed as depression is actually a very valid reaction to being in a shitty situation. I myself ended up at a psychiatrist due to being stuck in a shitty job with me being too exhausted and anxious to do anything about it. What eventually 'cured' me wasn't any of the sessions with the shrink but being laid off in a company restructuring with a nice severance package that allowed me to take a couple of months to decompress and look for a job that was a better fit.

joe_mamba 9mo ago
>most cases of depression can be solved with a one-time deposit of $20 million in the patient's bank account. Yes, but actually not always. If you have someone overweight because they're only eating pizza, cheetos and cola everyday and you use a magic wand to give them Thor's physique, how long will their new physique last with their diet until they devolve back into a slug monster? Money tends to run out, very quickly for some people. If you aren't able to keep your life in order when you're poor, you'll probably squander it all quickly too if you win the lottery. Like a friend of mine said "Thank God nobody gave me a million dollars when I was a drug addict, I would have OD's in a day". People with self destructive tendencies don't need 20 million dollars, they need therapy, a stable job, and a loving caring community, something that fewer people have nowadays.
- alphawhisky 9mo ago
  This is a pretty poor take. Everyone knows that it's easier to maintain fitness/muscle than build it. The same is true with money, it's much easier to coast or make moves financially when you have headroom. There's a type of financial self-sabotage people often commit when they're in an "unwinnable" situation called Doom Spending. I feel like the same psychological principles that convince a person in debt to finance their groceries also makes them lean into eating when overweight, lean into laziness when unemployed, etc. They always say that the hardest part is starting, but when it comes to money, fitness, employment, not everyone starts from the same place, and without being/having been at rock bottom you can't speak to the perspective of getting out of it. Agreed that a holistic approach is the only proper way though.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

wvh 9mo ago

You just described causes of depression, like divorce, social isolation and being unemployed. I know there are people that can feel free in a place as horrible as a concentration camp, but most of us have some basic needs that have to be met to feel OK and have some hope. Some people have actual neurotransmitter imbalances, but many of us just have monkey brains that don't know how to deal with (real, abstract) modern-day stressors that trigger a fight-or-flight response.

vrosas 9mo ago

This is exactly the kind of list that is both not true (solving depression is not a checklist) and COMPLETELY unhelpful to anyone actually dealing with depression. It's like saying "just make more money" to someone with financial struggles.

weatherlite 9mo ago
I see your point but I think there's nuance here First of all exercise should be seen as one of the first lines of defense against not only depression but chronic health problems (which also lead to depression). So you shouldn't wait until you are depressed to start exercising - ideally it is something you do all the time. Secondly - someone who's depressed is not keen on most things - including talking to a therapist , yet we still encourage them to do it. If you have the will power to pay hundreds of dollars a session to talk to a complete stranger, in theory you may have the willpower to walk birskly for 150 minutes a week. As a society we should simply encourage everyone no matter what age or state of mind to do that.

goodpoint 9mo ago

AKA "just don't be depressed"

z3t4 9mo ago

- lower your expectations If you set your goal too high you will be sad all the time. Choose a goal that you would be happy with but make sure it's a realistic goal!

basisword 9mo ago

Every time this comes up the comments are the same. Just don't eat crap, just go to the gym, just make sure you get good sleep. It shows a total lack of understanding of depression. Of course these things work - and if people weren't depressed they might be able to try and do them. But when you have severe depression you literally have zero motivation. None. You suddenly can't sleep. You can barely get yourself out of bed. That's why things like pills are useful because they can help you get to the point where you can take the steps necessary to get your life into a state where it's less conducive to depression. >> ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try fix them if you want your situation to improve, since nobody else will. No. This is why doctors and psychologists etc exist. Not everything is fixable by you. Sometimes you need help from other people and blaming the depressed person for being depressed is fucking idiotic.

randusername 9mo ago

> How to solve most cases of depression Tread carefully friend, I agree this is a good list to _prevent_ the most common forms of depression, but some will think you are framing major clinical depression as a personal failing. Some people slide into a hole of their own making. Others get thrown into the abyss by external factors. Grief, trauma, abuse, crises of repressed identity, poverty and poor prospects. Life can be brutal. I highly, highly recommend The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (Solomon) for anyone that is interested in a comprehensive view of depression.

joe_mamba 9mo ago
>Some people slide into a hole of their own making Others get thrown into the abyss by external factors. Yes, true, a lot of the times it is from external factors (ask me how I know), but what people miss is that even in that case, it's still on you to get yourself out since SSRIs and therapy session won't fix the situation you fell into, nor will anyone else come to get you out, unless maybe you're lucky enough to have an incredible family, community or support network. It's still your responsibility to get yourself out even when your situation is not your fault. That's the sad truth about life, you have to play the hand you're dealt, instead of being depressed you've been dealt a bad hand. It's not fair, but that's how it works.
- randusername 9mo ago
  From one internet stranger to another, both vaguely alluding to heavy things in our lived experience, I respectfully invite you to consider a "yes and". Yes, we all must accept responsibility in changing our circumstances. _And_ we all can accept responsibility for helping others do the same. Some people need to hear the first part that you shared. Others need to hear the the second part that I am sharing.

jmye 9mo ago

> How to solve most cases of depression What absurdly thoughtless, shallow nonsense. What, specifically, is your background in depression research, that leads you to believe you've completed solved it for everyone? I'll wait. I'm sure it's fucking extensive.

Fricken 9mo ago

One indicator that you might be falling in to depression is that you struggle to find the motivation to maintain those healthy practices.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

Insanity 9mo ago

The last one you list is hardest to fix. And that in turn causes the others. For example, if you have a stressful job, you might: 1. Sleep less (job stress or long hours keeping you up) 2. Eat less healthy (coping mechanism for job stress, and it’s faster) 3. Have less time for the higher quality social interactions.

tpoacher 9mo ago

How to solve most cases of paraplegia: - Regular long walks at the park - Climb stairs whenever possible instead of using the lift - Good foot care - Engage in social exercise like running clubs - Wear good quality footwear, suitable for the activity that you're engaged in. Of course, not all paraplegics can use their feet, but ultimately it becomes your responsibility to try to improve leg strength to the point of overcoming paraplegia, by doing the things that would have helped in improving leg strength, if only you could walk. /s (tbf, not fully disagreeing per se, and all analogies are flawed, but the above sarcasm is to point out that this model is overly simplistic. And it can lead to hidden but very real unconscious bias and discrimination once words like "responsibility" is thrown into the mix)

butlike 9mo ago

I don't agree with the elimination of things. Removing things can be its own source of tribulation. I agree on all other parts, though

GuB-42 9mo ago

Sounds like a catch 22 to me. All of what you describe besides environmental stressors are symptoms of depression. So, to solve depression, you must first solve depression. And even the environmental stressors are something we could work with as a society though welfare, environment regulations, etc... But how people react to them is also a symptom. There are depressive people with the best of situations, and people who enjoy life in the worst of situations. What often strikes me in documentaries about warzones, places of repression and extreme poverty or crippling diseases is how "normal" people seem to be, they enjoy themselves as if everything was fine. So, while reducing environmental stressors work, it is not the end of it. The take may be that treating the symptoms of depression could work in treating the root cause, a positive feedback loop. But if done through lifestyle change, unfortunately, the treatment is coercion, you can't rely on the willpower of people who have none because of the disease.

bulbar 9mo ago

That's a dangerous take. People that suffer from a clinical depression oftentimes won't be able to do any of these things and this has nothing to do with responsibility and everything with suffering from a depression. From what I have learned from friends working in the field, meds often work as an enabler, allowing people to do some of the things that are known to improve their condition further. If you think you suffer from depression, don't keep trying to "just buckle up", don't keep trying to "just need to take responsibility". Go talk to professionals, therapists and/or psychiatrists. Mental disorders do things to a person outside of their control.