I saw an article in my newsfeed (? not sure if that’s the word?) that was headlined “Five Simple Tricks to Stop Depression”. I would love to link it but I lost the url.
Great, right? Five Simple Tricks? After a wall of text about whether or not anti-depressants work, the article finally got to the promised Five Simple Tricks.
Yeah. Here they are:
Get enough sleep.
Eat a healthy diet.
Get regular exercise.
Try mindfulness techniques like meditation.
Don’t isolate socially.
Wow. Such wisdom. I never would’ve thought of this.
Here’s some thoughts I have about these “tricks” and the simplicity thereof:
Getting enough sleep is difficult because my depression gives me insomnia.
Eating healthy requires my careful consideration of ingredients and extra cooking and washing up, instead of just ordering out because I’m tired from my depression.
Exercising may not actually help depression if you hate exercising. I had regular exercise sessions three times a week for two full years. Lost some weight and gained stamina, but it did NOTHING for my depression, except give me a violent resentment of exercising.
I haven’t tried meditation, so no comment. But meditation done right is hardly a “trick”.
Annnd socializing. Absolutely a chore when I’m depressed. The pandemic is still making issues with this one.
I guess I’m just sick of tricks to “snap out of it.”
Useless to you, and many people who have had clinical depression for years or off and on for years, but if you are a teen or someone who has never had depression, it is a start with something they can try while waiting interminably to get in to a doctor.
There are more healthy and less healthy things you can choose when ordering out. And it doesn’t really require extra cooking and washing up to eat an apple or a carrot.
“Exercising” just means being physically active. Find something that gets you moving that you enjoy, or at least don’t hate.
“Socializing” makes me think of people trying to make small talk at a party. Think of “don’t isolate socially” as meaning “have people in your life that you’re connected to (like close friends and/or family).” And yeah, easier said than done. But I can well believe that, to whatever extent you can do it, it’ll reduce your risk of depression.
Any article that promotes “simple tricks” to combat depression is bound to be a pile of crap.
That said, exercise is useful, the caveat being that’s it’s very hard to get your body moving when your mind is telling it no way.
I’m still pissed off at that much-publicized recent review, which dismissed insufficient serotonin as an important mechanism in depression, slammed antidepressants and suggested that sufferers instead get psychoanalysis and “mindfulness” therapy.
So many of these lists boil down to “have you tried not being depressed?” Others seem to operate under the belief that if somebody behaves like they’re not depressed, then they won’t be depressed.
All of those things mentioned have a relationship to mental health, but none of them are magic bullets.
These sound like useful ways to avoid becoming depressed, not ways to climb out of chronic depression.
IMO there are people who are not biochemically depressed, they just have depression-like personal habits. They are at some risk of falling into a permanent state that looks like biochemical depression but is not. this advice can work for them.
If you’re biochemically depressed the one and only way IMO to become undepressed is to become biochemically more normal. That’s the bare absolute prerequisite to remodeling the depression-reinforcing habits the article’s 5 steps are intended to break. The central challenge is that current science is not quite up to that task in many / most cases and in our primitive 3rd world country it costs money which not everyone has.
Just a comment that might be kind of a side note (or not). IANAD and certainly not an expert on depression, but I’m a believer in both the justification and efficacy of temporary pharmaceutical solutions to start the process of weaning oneself off depression.
For starters, if as you say depression contributes to insomnia, creating a kind of vicious circle, then the so-called Z-drug hypnotics can be a great temporary fix. These include sleeping aids like zopiclone and Ambien (zolpidem). There are generally very few if any side effects from Z-drug hypnotics and the main risk is developing tolerance and dependence over time.
Secondly, attacking depression directly with a modern SSRI type drug like Prozac (fluoxetine) can be very effective for many people, including those with a psychological source of depression and not just those with a biochemical imbalance.
This is not medical advice on the internet – it’s a suggestion to talk to your doctor or a qualified therapist about some of these options. The “five simple steps” in the article may also be helpful as adjuncts to medical treatment.
Maybe things you can decide to do, even if you are depressed, to mitigate some of the negative outcomes of not doing those things. CBT (very) Lite, as it were.
Depression is an illness, you can’t just snap out of it or decide to make it go away or ‘be happier’, but you can, potentially, decide that in spite of depression, you will continue to live.
And as such it is very evidence based, on the mark public health interventions, albeit presented simplistically in the “trick” “hack” clickbait fashion
Indeed none of them are very useful to tell someone who is severely depressed. But after? To prevent relapse? Yes they all significantly reduce the risk of having a first depression or a second for most.
Inadequate sleep often self imposed is a huge addressable risk factor and is wide spread across our society. Of course depression also causes inadequate sleep but studies have shown that controlling for depression presence at baseline sleep of 6 hours or less increased future depression risk. For example.
So on for the whole list.
All the way through the data is strong that these are powerful preventative measures, each able to be accomplished with modest effort by most who are not currently depressed.
When currently depressed they are best considered aspirational goals.
Aren’t these recommendations pretty much what’s supposed to help one avoid heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc.? It’s not just depression specific, so the article’s title seems a little bogus to me. It should be, “Here are five simple hacks to get the best mental and physical health of your life!” or something like that.
Are you me? I hate exercise more than ever after I was a vigorous exerciser for a few years in my 30s. I hated it SO much and now never want to exercise because of how difficult it was for me to keep up that level of activity, even when I had lost a bunch of weight, was eating well, and should have had the mental and physical energy for it.
ETA: What about the recent research that has come out, suggesting that depression is not a “chemical imbalance” as used to be advertised on, I believe, old Wellbutrin commercials?
And is there anything besides CBT that works as a treatment (other than medications)?
I think part of the hatred for exercise for me is because everyone assured me that I would feel so much better if I had a regular exercise routine, both physically and emotionally. Wrong! Big letdown. Big cash outlay too.
