I'm in the Pacific NW, fall/winter/spring is coming.. :(
The people I've known who have had the biggest problems with mental illness were the ones who wore their diagnoses like a badge and used these sorts of 'no true Scotsman' arguments to isolate themselves.
To put a finer point on it, if you want evidence behind my "platitudes" mountains of scientific literature can be found reinforcing the benefits of sleep, light, and exercise and their effects on depression.
Let's pick exercise. Here's a cochrane collaboration review:
http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depre...
> Exercise is moderately more effective than no therapy for reducing symptoms of depression.
That's your "mountain of evidence"? It's moderately better than fuck all?
No, that's the conclusion. There's mountains of evidence indicating it's moderately better than fuck all. And there is, really, if a review of 39 studies reaches this conclusion.
Same goes for other physical factors like sleep, light, diet. They each contribute a bit. As can medication, therapy, healthy relationships.
> The reviewers also note that when only high-quality studies were included, the difference between exercise and no therapy is less conclusive.
People think exercise works. When you test it you find some evidence it works unless you do a good test, and then it doesn't look like it does anything more than doing nothing.
This is important - suicide is a leading cause of death, and people who don't know what they're talking about should stop telling people with a potentially fatal illness to "go for a jog".
> Our review suggested that exercise might have a moderate-sized effect on depression, but because of the risks of bias in many of the trials, the effect of exercise may only be small. We cannot be certain what type and intensity of exercise may be effective, and the optimum duration and frequency of a programme of exercise. There are few data on whether any benefits persist after exercise has stopped.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004366...
My personal takeaway is that based on this review, which is more pessimistic than prior reviews, we have confidence that exercise has a small effect, and if the data were better we might be able to say it had a moderate effect.
Bright light, sleep, and exercise.
Light: get bright light to wake you up, experience bright light during the day (preferably sunlight), if you're having trouble sleeping, disconnect from any screens at least an hour before a scheduled time to sleep. Don't set up yourself in a dark closed-window living environment.
Sleep: ahead of time, schedule times when you should be asleep and awake, always be trying to keep to this schedule. Stay out of the bedroom outside of these hours.
Exercise: whether it's walking around the block, going to the gym, or hiking up a mountain, do what you can to exert yourself every day. It helps with the light and the sleep.
These three things won't fix your problems but they will make everything better even if you can only improve them a little.