for you -- you have no idea whether it'll work for anyone else.
Since depression is a potentially fatal illness, and you appear not to have any training in psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, medicine, pharmacology, you should maybe recognise your limits.
> Changing your lifestyle to treat depression works
Only for some people. you have no idea how many people it does work for, and you have no idea how many people it doesn't work for, so you might want to avoid judging people who don't take your advice.
Exercise is moderately more effective than a control intervention for reducing symptoms of depression, but analysis of methodologically robust trials only shows a smaller effect in favour of exercise. When compared to psychological or pharmacological therapies, exercise appears to be no more effective, though this conclusion is based on a few small trials.
The medical community calls what you're doing "terminal uniqueness" and I've noticed that this is very prevalent with people who suffer from depression: "Those therapies won't work on me, I am different, I need a special treatment".
Sleep, eat well, keep active. Nothing about that advice is dangerous. But it is hard to do if you aren't in the habit of doing it. (I know what you're going to say next, "but chemicals in the brain!" What do you think sleeping, healthy dieting, and keeping active are trying to fix?)
Is there actual research that shows that the sleep/eat/exercise approach works by itself for everyone that is compliant? Most of the psychiatric community would absolutely agree that it helps, or couldn't hurt, but (anecdotally) I know athletes that control all of that stuff like a science because they have to in order to compete, but still suffer from depression, so I have trouble believing that's all there is to it.
> Is there actual research that shows that the sleep/eat/exercise approach works by itself for everyone that is compliant?
As far as I know, outside of crappy studies it's rare for a single intervention to even work for a majority of compliant patients/clients, let alone everyone. This is probably related to the notion of "depression" actually being multiple illnesses that share a common syndrome.
> except if the response to "I tried, but it doesn't work for me" is "your depression makes it even harder, but that is literally irrelevant"
In my experience dealing with depressed people, me included, there’s a huge spectrum in what “tried” means.
Doing it once won’t help much. Forcing yourself to consistently do it every day for 2 years? Now we’re talking.
If after 2 years of doing things that are known to up your spirits in at least some segment of the population every day you still don’t see absolutely any results, then you get to say it doesn’t work.
After all, you wouldn’t expect antidepressants to work unless you take them every day.
If you’re on meds and some days you feel like taking them and others you don’t, and you actually follow that schedule. Do you expect those meds to work?
It’s not the trying and it not working that doesn’t matter. It’s the not feeling like doing things that doesn’t matter. Gotta do it anyway. Whether it's exercise, taking meds, or going to therapy. If you don't do it, it can't help.
So did you try Rust for two years before deciding it didn’t help you? Your position on these things is across the board absurd
>if you’re on meds ...
Have you considered that the people in this thread saying it doesn’t work aren’t just saying “it’s hard”?
67% of college kids are suffering acute anxiety, is 67% of the college populations only problem a lack of excercise? Your insistence on these things is frustrating and obnoxious. The people who called you insensitive have very good cause, I hope that doesn’t make you proud.
Also, is discipline even a good thing? Do you think cave men said “well I have to hunt 5 hours a day...”? Probably not, or we wouldn’t have agriculture. Discipline seems like a substitute for ludditetism.
Also! Advice like this live and die by how hard they are to follow. If your advice is so hard to follow for te depressed that they won’t do it, it’s much harder to be proven wrong.
> Have you considered that the people in this thread saying it doesn’t work aren’t just saying “it’s hard”?
Yes I have.
My attitude is probably influenced by personal experience in dealing with depressed people. So far every time I’ve been observing someone long term, and they said “it doesn’t work”, they rarely kept at it for more than a month at a time here and there.
It is possible that everyone in this thread is different and kept at it for a long time consistently and it didn’t help.
And I never said “only exercise”, I said Do Things. Hang out with people, work on projects, make art, enjoy friends, go to a bar, see a movie, travel. Whatever as long as you’re not sitting on the couch giving in to your depression.
> this advice is upsetting to me
People I love sitting on the couch rotting from depression is upsetting to me.
I have a genetic disorder. It was not properly diagnosed until I was nearly 36 years old. So, I spent the first 36 years of my life hearing that I was just lazy and not trying hard enough.
You being unable to fix someone else by brilliantly suggesting what worked for you is not definitive evidence that they simply aren't trying hard enough. That underlying attitude is monstrously arrogant and insulting to other people.
The world does not revolve around you. You being upset because someone else is "sitting on the couch rotting" does not give you the right to harangue people until they prove your pet theory correct that they just need to try harder.
You can't claim that sleeping, eating, and exercising are "fixing" chemicals in the bain any more than people can claim chemical imbalance causes mental illness. There is no baseline for what normal chemical levels are.
> The medical community calls what you're doing "terminal uniqueness"
No, the medical community calls it "evidence based medicine".
I've posted links to well run meta analysis by an organisation widely regarded as providing the gold standard for medical evidence.
other people are posting "it worked for me" - exactly what we hear from people who try crystal healing or homeopathy.
> Sleep, eat well, keep active. Nothing about that advice is dangerous.
Depression is a potentially fatal illness. If people are not getting evidence based treatment because they're following advice from people who don't know what they're talking about, those people may become more ill, and they may find it harder to seek help, and they may then die by suicide. suicide is a leading cause of death in men under 49, and in all people between ages 20-35 (in UK, and probably in us if they used same definition).
> (I know what you're going to say next, "but chemicals in the brain!"
A lazy assumption, I've never said "brain chemicals". I've always said "bio-psycho-social".
for you -- you have no idea whether it'll work for anyone else.
Since depression is a potentially fatal illness, and you appear not to have any training in psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, medicine, pharmacology, you should maybe recognise your limits.
> Changing your lifestyle to treat depression works
Only for some people. you have no idea how many people it does work for, and you have no idea how many people it doesn't work for, so you might want to avoid judging people who don't take your advice.