Depression Cure: What We Get Wrong

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Apr 21, 2022

✨POV✨: You're sick and tired of people asking you to eat right, stay hydrated, think positive or exercise as a way to cure depression. You're wondering if there is any sense to what they're saying. Who's completely misdirected here - you or them? Would it really be that easy to cure depression?

Depression, like other mental disorders, is not just a physical ailment (which it can be with severe depression). It may have physical symptoms like fatigue, difficulty sleeping, body aches, tightness in the chest, and headaches, but because it is concerned with mental health, only physical remedies will not cure it.

Mental health concerns are a lot more complex than our usual physical issues because it is experienced in the mind, which cannot be seen as it is by others, only conjectured (and judged very often). And when we are recommended lifestyle changes as the be-all & end-all solution to depression, the experience of mental health decline is being trivialized and belittled. Which, if not clear already, is absolutely not okay.

If depression were that straightforward to decode and fix, we wouldn't still be fighting to raise mental health awareness. Think of the scale of mental health like this, if our body is one unit, our mind is an equally important balancing unit. Mental health is as important as physical health. If our mind is in any way weakened by the forces of the world or our experiences, we can't just eat, walk or sleep our way through it. It's our minds we need to understand and heal.

What is NOT a Depression Cure? ❌

The issue of belittling depression symptoms comes up when one believes that what they see is all there is. And sometimes, even we fall prey to this issue when we question our own symptoms of depression and dismiss them as inherent weaknesses or shortcomings.

And this is a systemic issue, popping up from the lack of mental health awareness. So in that gap, many people jump to express their opinions based on an absence of any such personal mental health issue (or the awareness of it).

These are some of those opinions which are often labeled as fixes to depression.

💤 Sleep on Time & Get Enough Sleep

We've all probably heard this as the solution for many issues and not just depression. Sleep is definitely important and does relieve symptoms. But what's important to note about sleep, like all the other opinions listed below, is that it is one part of the healing journey. It is not a one-stop-shop cure.

Hearing this can feel especially trivializing when being unable to sleep or oversleeping are depression symptoms we are battling. So what, the solution is that we just sleep when we have trouble getting quality sleep? Yeah, no.

🍽️ Eat a Balanced Diet & Stay Hydrated

This is one of those pieces of advice that roll off people's tongues very easily.

Oh, you're feeling anxious? It's probably all the junk you're eating. Eat healthy.

This is so easy to say and is not exactly wrong (because highly processed food does cause inflammation in our bodies and brains), but to reiterate, eating unprocessed healthy food does not magically waive off symptoms and treat depression. Nor does eating junk food cause a mental disorder like depression.

The right nutrition can help give our bodies and brains a boost in our healing journey, but that's about it.

🧘🏽‍♀️ Workout or Do Yoga

Sweating it out is definitely one of those commonly-heard facile solutions. And for some good reason too - regular exercise (in any form) triggers the release of feel-good hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins and serotonin, of which there's a shortage when we're experiencing depression. So yes, working out is definitely great.

But the question is, if we are struggling with imposter syndrome or guilt over past events, can working out everyday makes those go away? No, it can't. It can only help us (with the brigade of feel-good hormones) when we're also actively working on those specific issues.

💪🏽 Try Harder

This is probably one of the most frustrating things to hear as we're battling depression. What many don't realize is beautifully captured in this quote.

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. – Elizabeth Wurtzel

Depression is not as simple as being lazy or not doing enough. Because if that were the case, the same incentives that work for others (like having loved ones, or money, or career growth) would also work for us. There's a reason that depression pushes people into survival mode, because that's what reality feels like on the other side - like a battlefield ridden with triggers and attacks.

💡 Think Positive

This un-thoughtful piece of advice has some ounce of truth to it, which is that having more positive thoughts is a sign of and is a route to good mental health. But the catch here is that positive thinking needs to be cultivated. It cannot become a practice through wishful thinking.

And negative thoughts don’t occur by choice; they don’t imply weakness or having a low level of self-awareness (if anything, a higher sense).

Learning to discard negative thoughts and replace them with affirmative positive thoughts has its own learning curve. It takes time and effort, and the journey will include days when it doesn't help. So thinking positively for one day or even for a week will not cure depression.

But all said, it is one of those healthy coping mechanisms we can build with the right support and guidance in time.

👏🏼 Be Grateful for What You Have

Practicing gratitude is a beautiful and grounding exercise, no doubt. But we can't find stability by focusing on the non-sinking boat. The reality of the sinking boat still takes us down.

So it makes more sense to bandage the wound instead of appreciating all the other parts that are not wounded.

Practicing gratitude might make it easier for us to accept that not everything is bad (when we're really tempted to think like that). It can act like a cushion that keeps us from spiraling. That's what it is, an aid in the healing journey of depression, and not the way.

🧹 Clean Your Room

This is a parents' favorite.

If this were a cure for depression, it would even treat treatment-resistant depression, which is immune to real treatments of depression like interpersonal therapy and antidepressant medication (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). Hence, proved.

Cleaning can be a therapeutic activity for many. It can help us feel de-cluttered mentally. But it doesn't apply to everyone and most surely, doesn't apply to everyone dealing with depression.

Reality Check: Treating Depression ❤️‍🩹

Prescribing a depression treatment is not for everyone. There are doctors and therapists who've studied for five years or more to learn the art of diagnosis and treatment.

Cures imply that an illness is irreversibly healed. But with physical and mental health, that's not the case. Someone who has recovered from the flu, can get the flu again. And someone who has recovered from depression, can fall prey to depression symptoms again.

What treatment does is, it heals the illness and teaches us how to heal again, in case we ever need to. In some senses, we gain partial immunity through awareness, experience and practice.

To know about the treatments that come even close to being cures of depression, click here.

Last Word on Mental Health 🤍

Depression is like that maze that has many right ways out. It's up to us to choose and take the closest and easiest way out. And to help us with this, we need the expertise of trained mental health professionals.

The complementary and integrative health approach, an upcoming holistic treatment option for depression, combines conventional and unconventional therapies. In this approach, it isn't just mental health professionals who guide us in regaining health, it can be a combination of therapists, yoga instructors, acupuncture specialists, masseuses, and more.

Note on Mental Illness 🚩

Clinical depression can be of many different types - moderate depression, severe depression (aka major depression or major depressive disorder), treatment-resistant depression, or more. If you have symptoms of clinical depression or thoughts of self-harm, please use the national suicide prevention lifeline or contact a mental health professional to seek treatment options.

Antidepressant medications may be prescribed in the case of severe symptoms, in combination with a form of therapy such as interpersonal therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation or progressive muscle relaxation techniques, based on severity and type of depression.