A lot of the time the change in behavior is a coping mechanism rather than a cause for the depressive symptoms. They don't work out because they are so physically drained they can barely even muster up the energy to fulfill their responsibilities, or they become recluses because they believe their social connections aren't capable of supporting that level of vulnerability.
I suspect that it is more like the other way around, in that lifestyles incentivized in the developed world are rather poor at mitigating causes of depression, and by that I mean on a more fundamental, macro level instead of individual, which is why it has become so pervasive. For example, we have a fairly individualistic society, where many people have very shallow roots in their communities because of various causes of upheaval like immigration, education, employment. This makes it very difficult to get compassionate community support, which leaves mental healthcare workers to fulfill that position in a clinical manner.
More like, intentionally designed to cause mild reactive depression. You even have social media corporations openly admit to running psyops on their users.
depressed people probably spend more money on random bs trying to make themselves happier, or soothe their psychological pain.
First, that's borderline impossible to the point that it's an impractical and irrelevant suggestion. Second, for many, including myself, not much results but more stress and misery. Depression isn't one disease and is just a syndrome (a set of symptoms) caused by many different unrelated conditions and for many people those causes are entirely biological- not behavioral- and need to be treated like any other physical ailment. For some people (but not all), medication, therapy or other treatment can cause an improvement great enough for them to do be able to do those things and for some of those people (but not all) doing those things does help.
It's easy for example to overlook trauma, and just blame ourselves "why can't we just be happy" or our brain's chemistry, while ignoring all the terrible things that happened to us, because it's too painful to relieve them.
Aren't treatments like this like reducing a person's fever by force (which they got because of a bacteria infection) while not fixing the underlying issue that caused it in the first place?
TL;DR: Instead of asking "What's wrong with you?" and making that part right by force, shouldn't we be asking "What happened to you?" and helping with that?
Medicinal treatments along with therapy can help.
I wonder to what extent this mindset of viewing depression as purely biological is responsible for keeping people in depression by removing their sense of agency over it, as well as fostering dependence on drugs that at best result in temporary relief with a constant need for ever-increasing dosages as desensitization arises, and at worst can actually dramatically worsen one's mental condition (happened to a friend of mine recently who started experiencing depression since COVID lockdowns, was prescribed medication by a therapist, which seemed to be working at first until he started experiencing bipolar psychosis, and has now been switched to another medication and had to have the police called on him after multiple episodes of insanity, and is now on the verge of being sent to a mental hospital)
> Someone mentions lack of willpower and personal agency.
It's honestly incredible how people STILL try to argue that depressed people should "just get over with it", just stop being sad and stop being lazy. My god.
Excuse me, but you have fundamentally failed at understanding what depression even is and apparently conflate it with some rebel teenager phase during puberty by telling people to just get a grip on themselves.
Even the original commenter stated that for some, depression is purely biological, whereas for others, it may involve behavioral components. It's kind of ridiculous that anytime someone mentions personal agency in a depression thread, one gets heavily downvoted with hoards of commenters jumping in to say "depression is purely biological and only treatable through medication and therapy!" Ok, perhaps this is true for many depressed people, but what is the breakdown of depressed people who's depression is purely biological like this vs. those who's depression is also behavioral (I would guess the former being a small minority)? Why are we not allowed to acknowledge the latter? How does speaking to self-agency make anyone worse off?
Depression is complex. Let's not reduce it to something as simple as being a biological disease curable only via medication and therapy. In the past I would've said something along the same lines as my previous posts but excused myself out of the conversation earlier since I don't really have a horse in this race. But now that I have a close friend who's experiencing psychosis and basically lost his mind (eg. running around naked, talking to voices in his head) due to some psychiatrist prescribing him with the "wrong" depression medication, the issue has become personal to me. Apparently even the "experts" don't seem to know how to treat depression, so let's not speak so condescendingly and matter-of-factly as if anyone knows what they're talking about here.
That mindset is called a medical and scientific mindset[1]. You need to educate yourself before you hurt someone.
Your invitation to "educate yourself" seems condescending and unnecessary.
Good intentions or not.
“Doing” things is literally impossible (well, torture is possible but unsustainable).
What you have seen is probably depressed people not managing well. Do not call it dopamine-bingeing because there is absolutely no intent there.
Depression is very very debilitating and it really messes up with your mind in unfatomable ways.
- Situational: you force yourself to do things, you feel better and break out of the cycle
- Physical: you force yourself to do things, you don't feel anything but suffering. You don't get endorphins from exercise, you don't get serotonin from going to events and hanging out and achieving things. Depression is usually anhedonia which is a loss of feeling - whatever happens you're completely emotionless
Depression creates a feedback loop: not doing things makes you depressed, depression makes you not do things. So sometimes you are just lazy and need to start doing stuff. But sometimes it's a physical depression which caused you to stop doing things, and just doing things again won't make you not depressed. That's why I generally suggest starting and trying things, to see if they have any effect, but don't push it otherwise.
Not necessarily. There are physical changes when you exercize which also help with a physically-induced depression. The same is true for diet.
Just because it's psysical as opposed to situational doesn't mean it's just up to drugs and drugs alone to cure it.
I'm explicitly saying "it" [that is, forcing yourself to do things, like get in the sun, exercize, sleep less, better diet, etc.] does change something psysiologically, and does help, even in cases of non-situational depression.
The grandparent comment claimed that this helps only in cases of situational depression.
at times even things like morphine have been tried.
You don't want to exercise, see people nor wake up in the morning, and you feel terrible.
Winston Churchill used to paint while he's depressed. Its not a case of "they are hopeless" - they need to move and do something. And in the process, recognising what the triggers are and how to overcome it.
Lifestyle changes will help some depression, it will not help others. Generalizing from your own experiences is useful, but be very careful with how you present this to others.
Telling a chronically depressed person they just need to take a walk and eat some fruit is not just insulting, it's fodder for self-invalidating thoughts which can increase self-destructiveness.
And it’s hard to accept that your life style is “bad”. You can’t be you, basically, as if you were born untreatably ill. For me personally, these abnormal states turn on the rage against the nature, which in turn motivates to do workout in intricate ways sometimes, but it may not be the case for other people or for other activites. E.g. no way I’m going to look for a social interaction when depressed and/or anxious, that will only strengthen the negative effects.
It all ends up with a constant questioning why the life (in a sense of nature etc) is so fucked up and cannot exist in different forms than “normal”. You become an almost broken engine which it feels like requires a maintenance 24/7 and now this is your life. Yes, you can do that, but it is itself demotivating.
I fully agree with the triggers part though, and that can only be done through doing something.
This is destructive rhetoric.
but you are absolutely, emphatically wrong.
Depression in many ways is consistent with "sickness behaviour". It is often a signal to get away from a stressor, just like sickness behaviour you have during flu is a signal that it's time to lay down and rest.
P.S. inb4, yes, there are other kinds of depression, like endogenous depression and such that are different in that regard (and treated differently too). none of the exceptions invalidate the most common scenario.
It is absolutely different from “feeling down”.
It is a way of perceiving your reality and the world which no one can understand. And a supreme lack of energy.
Please please please do not put more strain on depressed people’s minds.
They would die for a MINUTE of “just calm”.
It is unfortunate that the term "depression" is used frequently for things that are not really depression.
I highly recommend this lecture by Stanford's Sapolsky On Depression to understand the difference. He will do so far more articulatly than I ever could.
As a person intimately familiar with depression as it has been with me for decades and it is still deeply inside of me the answer to your question is “No”.
Depression is hell. It sits inside you. You cannot run from it, you cannot hide from it. Whatever you do it is still inside you and it does not let up and it tortures you continuously.
It does -not- improve by going for a walk. It does not go away with social interaction. It does not go away by not eating.
It turns the entire world bleak.
I have to time my interaction with other people carefully, so I won’t start screaming before I am alone again.
Asking a depressed person to “go for a walk”, “exercise” and things will be better is absurd. It Is like asking person in a wheel chair to get up and go for a run,
It is also the standard reaction from people once they hear “you are depressed”. They have no idea whatsoever what they are talking about, and I wish people would just stop it. Don’t you think if it was that f…ing simple I would have done it a long time ago.
I feel a deep need to scream at a person who suggests it, but you can’t do that in this society.
If I could put a finger on them and let them experience what is inside me for a moment they would be the one running away screaming.
However, in my experience, when you truly are clinically depressed, (1) you can't really force yourself to do anything good, and (2) even if you do something positive, you'll just get tired from trying to look like a functioning human being and may even feel worse.
In general, doing positive things do help, but only after you started medication and/or psychotherapy.
* If I don't eat sugar for a week, the next time I eat it, it tastes way better
* If I don't watch TV for a week, the next time I watch a good movie, it's way more enjoyable
* If I'm physically active for a week, the lazy day after that week of physical activity is more enjoyable
In my experience, a lot of things in life seem more enjoyable when moderated. The list can certainly be expanded.
No clue if this is official dopamine fasting, but that's what it makes me think of. And to be honest, I don't care what the science says on this*... my own personal experience is important enough for me to change the way I behave.
* unless it says it'll somehow lead to some horrible outcome down the road... then I'd consider it
If I get used to being physically active, the next day that I am NOT physically active I feel terrible.
On the other hand, if I have been lazy for a period, then one day I do a very brief exercise, even a 10-min moderate run, makes me feel excellent. However when I start doing those runs everyday, I don't feel that same good feeling.
How hard are you pushing it? Increase the difficulty/duration, and you may find a different outcome. I'm not talking pro-athlete level, but competitive high school athlete level (2-3 hours / day, 5-6 days / week, with some good lung heaving moments each day).
> On the other hand, if I have been lazy for a period, then one day I do a very brief exercise, even a 10-min moderate run, makes me feel excellent. However when I start doing those runs everyday, I don't feel that same good feeling.
I don't think this is the opposite. One is moderation of laziness, the other of physical activity. "If I'm lazy for a week, the day of exercise after that lazy week is more enjoyable".
Say you feel the urge to play another round of a video game. You tell yourself "No, make a break". Now your brain replies "Ok, then let's eat some chocolate". You reply "No, let's not eat chocolate either". Now your brain replies "What? You said take a break from the GAME! Why not chocolate? Ok, then lets drink a coffee". Now you reply "We take a break from dopamine! No game, chocolate, coffee, beer etc! You understand?". Your brain "Damn. Ok. Grumble. Grumble.".
Then later in the day:
Your Brain: "I feel so good today. I wonder why?"
I believe you misunderstand how dopamine works.[1] What you're talking about is called self-discipline in English and has value but doesn't need pseudoscience to support it.
1. https://neuwritesd.org/2017/09/28/dopamine-is-not-your-brain...
"Dopamine fasting" is not a literal or scientific term, its not pseudoscientific either. It merely describes the process (perhaps incorrectly) of imposing some challenge to impulsive behaviours which is a perfectly acceptable way to help break these habitual behaviors, neurologically speaking that is perfectly sound, and consistent with scientific insight into this area. People often misunderstand and apply the overly simplistic "dopamine bad" mentality and think it's somehow about volume of dopamine which is laughably incorrrect for such a complex and nuanced process.
But critics can't see the woods for the trees with this one.
It's a buzzword to get the point across,
I know a personal trainer with depression. <shrug> No silver bullets. I'm inclined to see these things as symptoms, although (if I may borrow more PT lingo) maladaptive behaviour from unrecovered injuries is also a thing. Pretty much every physio will tell you that a pain in muscle X is caused by a deficiency in supporting muscle Y. It's just that we have zero insight into the mutual support structure (if any!) inside the brain.
Careful management of your social group and obligations can turn you from a depressed person who does nothing into a depressed person who does things. Sometimes that's good enough. But antidepressants can definitely do more.
Or it could mean that the therapist didn't do a great job / didn't account for the individuality of the person
For many people with major depression, this isn't something you can just think your way out of or face your way out of. There are biochemical factors at play. Just like someone with diabetes can't exercise their way into a working pancreas, someone with major chronic, major depression can't just behavioral therapy their way into treatment.
Can behavioral therapy help? Absolutely. Is it going to be enough for people with hard to treat cases? Absolutely not.
it means that no, behavior change
could not do the the trick
Yes. Clearly I disagree with others here.
The problem is that it's a vicious circle so it's difficult to change your behavior/lifestyle. But if you can, maybe with external help, it surely helps except maybe in very hard cases.
By the way, I'm not sure the term clinical is being used correctly in other comments. Could someone with relevant knowledge confirm?
The worst obstacle to break the circle are negative thoughts, that hide where the exits from the labyrinth are.
This person has been managing depression without drugs or counseling for decades. There are ups and there are downs. From the outside, it's not always possible to tell the difference until they drop the bombshell "I'm extremely depressed lately" (as in, not just today or yesterday, but continually for a week or more).
I think of it like this: inside my head is a brain, and that brain experiences the world a particular way. Let's call it a colour filter. Well, everyone has a different filter, based on genetics and formative years. For some people, their normal state is 'content', unless something pushes their mood above or below. For other people the normal state is "shitty: slightly worried about nothing in particular, a bit sick of everything, I just want to go to sleep", and they have to constantly struggle to push above that state into one that is more bearable.
Forcing yourself to do these things while depressed is really hard.
There are good 'catalyst' like Buproprine and SSRs
Quite often I get told that my experience and what I have witnessed from my friends and family going through similar change of life situations, is that it's all anecdote.
We must simply wait until enough scientific studies that test "primal methods" such as dopamine management, exercise, etc, come out to support this theory.
Until then, trust the science and buy whatever new pill or method that will solve it.
As for me and my friends however, we have our cure, and we try to motivate others around us with mediocre success. (Who are you to question the ways of science? Dr says to take pills and I can keep eating my junk food..)
I would be careful about gloating about your success to those “pill-popping” “junk food eaters”… Even though it might feel great to get validation about your willpower or whatever.
Dr says to take pills and I can maybe get shit together long enough to change my eating habit and regularly go see a therapist*
I understand that getting prescribed random medication has a bad reputation for good reasons, but it's still not a good idea to misrepresent those bad outliers as the average situation.
[Note: I am not a doctor, but I lived with people with depression]
Apparently, in the case of true clinical depression (i.e. not just "feeling down"), not much. The typical reaction is "yeah, whatever", and they do it for as long as you want them to do it because they don't feel like resisting.
A change of behavior/lifestyle can certainly help, in the same way that lifestyle changes can help with many other diseases, but forcing depressive people to do what non-depressive people do looks just as effective as forcing people with broken legs to walk.
It also looks like there is more than one form of depressions. But the way I see it, depressive people are not sad, they are emotionless. Nothing brings them joy, but nothing saddens them either. I didn't even notice any "binge" behavior, they are just as likely to gain or lose weight, because who cares about eating. Depression is not grieving.
At one point I was working out 4 days a week, was absolutely ripped, and salsa dancing multiple nights a week; but I was still depressed.
It really depends on what kind of depression you have, often it’s a consequence of something else (in my case, probably an anxiety disorder and a genuine difficulty forming lasting social bonds).
For me depressive periods manifest as borderline obsessive computer gaming. It's not the binging that triggers the depression. I continue functioning as an employee and family member but need something to lift the feeling of anxiety and sadness. It's very much like a pain killer. I don't suggest compulsive gaming for anyone as a remedy but for me it makes things tolerable. I've been also so depressed that I got therapy and antidepressants, and warmly recommend the approach - but you need to find a therapist you feel suitable.
Well, the problem is that depression causes a lack of motivation, and the lack of action or inability to do even normal chores continues to fuel the depression. (Depending on its severity it sometimes even impairs people from doing basic tasks like taking care of personal hygiene - there are cases where indiviuals don't brush their teeth or even bathe for weeks; e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20120305002714/http://damnihateb... ). So to us "normal" individuals these people may look lazy or those that lack discipline, but it's actualy the disease impairing them.
As you guessed though, taking actions is indeed one of the behavioural techniques of Behaviour Therapy or Cognitive Therapy to tackle depression. It does work, and depressed individuals do cite an improvement in their mood when they do some task (especially stuff they have been procrastinating).
But if you consider the cognitive model of depression (i.e. the common thinking patterns of depressed individual), one other aspect of depression is that they don't feel satisfaction or a feeling of accomplishment in doing such tasks. And thus, any mood improvment is only temporary. Which again makes them feel helpless and they regress. Thus, cognitive therapy focuses on not only encouraging behavioural actions, but also working on correcting thought patterns that devalue such actions.
("Perfectionism" is one example of such thought pattern - if something is not "perfect", the individual often devalues the whole work done. Using the same examples you cited, even if you get this kind of individual to do a workout, as soon as s/he misses a workout, they will immediately start to blame themslelves for not being able to "maintain" discipline to the point of becoming dysfunctional..
Behavior is the result of the chemistry in your brain. You go out and socialize because it makes you feel good. Now what if you go out, socialize, and it makes you feel pain? Note, the pain itself does not have a physical cause, but that does not mean it is not real.
That's what difficult depression cases are like. Depression, like everything else, is a spectrum. The fact that one person can say "ah fuck it, I'll go out" and actually feels good does not mean that forcing a depressed person to go out is the cure for depression.
Cause / effect. Are they depressed because they don't work or hang out, or do they not work / hang out because they're depressed? And there's bound to be other options as well.
I mean nothing personal, but your comment has energy of "thanks I'm cured"
I’ve been in both sides of this question and, at least in my experience, its like wondering what happens when a tank of gas ignites itself. The activation energy just isn’t there. The thoughts are, but the spark isn’t.
I used to think this was just an analogy in my mind, but we’re an electrochemical beast and what does our brain actually *do* beyond selective catalysis.
Statistically, sure. Individually it might not work and uncertainty makes something hard even harder.
Which was discussed on here a fair bit a couple days f weeks back…
I recently talked with my partner about this, and annecdotaly, one friend had bad enough depressive episodes, they got an antidepressants prescription. Later they complained that it really helped with the downs of the depression, but in general it felt stifling and kind of muffled the highs in life previously accessible.
But, fortunately, the medication helped enough that they started and stuck to an exercise regime and then managed to phase out the medication.
I think with mental health in general, everything comes with a great deal of your-mileage-may-vary.
All of this takes a supreme level of effort, it never felt natural to me. Never got a "jogger's high". I was just depressed while my feet are moving. After spending time with friends I am emotionally drained and need to recharge. When I have a serious bout of depression, it's difficult to leave the bedroom / house for days or weeks at a time (at its worst). My entire body feels like I've been tumbled down a hill in a barrel.
In this time I've had a half dozen suicide attempts, two of them requiring medical attention. I still think of myself as a worthless waste of space. Every day when I wake up part of my routine is to shake off the suicidal ideation just to get started for the day.
CBT has helped to deal with the logical / behavioural impacts of this. I don't get as mad or frustrated at myself and am better equipped to recognise triggers and pull myself back from the edge.
I think if I had been able to get help when I was a child (I first started self-harming at age 7), perhaps being happy and motivated would feel more natural.
But no, even forcing a lifestyle change and doing all the things you said have no lasting effect. I doubt it will ever feel natural for me to wake up, go for a run, meet a friend before work for coffee, enjoy meetings with clients, etc.
Definitely still do those activities, otherwise things snowball. But the problem is a literal chemical / hormone imbalance in my brain that affects everything from when, how often and how long I sleep, and how much lethargy I have throughout the day.
A lot of people struggling with depression have had a lifetime of advice similar to what you suggested. Well-meaning family think it's as simple as just getting moving, and they think the symptoms are the problem, and we have a lifetime of being told to stop being lazy, stop feeling sorry for ourselves, etc, which is the main "stigma" of depression and the reason why these types of well-meaning posts usually result in less than positive responses from long-term chronic depression sufferers.
Edit to add - everyone's root causes are not the same, so while I have decent stretches where I can push myself to exercise and face the day, other people can't and there are times where I can't summon the energy and it's difficult to move. Also inb4 try changing your diet, have you tried meditation, read this <insert famous author>, etc. Living like this sucks and I've read and tried many things to ease the pain. Improvements are slow, incremental, hard-won, and often temporary / good until the next downer hits.
It can, sure. But as many other commenters have pointed out, depression isn't just one thing. And for many individuals who suffer from major depression, it isn't situational at all, so doing all those things (assuming you can do them), doesn't really change anything at all. Because of what has happened in the world over the last 21 months, it's harder and harder to separate a chronic, deep depression from the situational depression that many people have found themselves in. I've suffered from depression my entire life (I self-diagnosed at age nine but had symptoms going back to at least age six), and even I'm unsure if the depression I'm experiencing now is more situational or more biochemical, just because everything in the world has been such a mess.
I can tell you that for people with deep depression, there is only so much fronting and working-out and socializing a person can do before the energy required to do those things and put on a front, of "acting" OK becomes too much. And that can often explode in a fit of rage/sadness/sorrow, because believe it or not, most depressed people don't want to be depressed and don't want anyone else to know they are depressed.
I can also tell you that there are people who are so depressed they literally cannot get out of bed to take a shower, let along go for a run. They cannot move, not out of laziness, but because the act of physically moving is too mentally and physically taxing and painful. They literally cannot do any of the things that give them any sort of dopamine binge. They don't eat. I was an incredibly active high school athlete (cheerleading and gymnastics) before I fell into my first "can't-get-out-of-bed"/"can't function" period of depression as a 16 year old. I was lucky I had my parents (especially my mom), because she was tireless at finding me the right psychiatrist (six in an 18 month period) and keeping notes of the side-effects of the different medications I kept trying (over 15 before we found a combo that worked at the time and probably that many have been tried since as I've gotten older and my body and biochemistry and hormones have changed), not to mention handling the insurance, taking me to doctor appointments, making sure I could eat. I had to handle more of it myself when I had another major depressive episode in college -- my mom still helped but I didn't live with her anymore and was no longer a minor, whose health she could take an active role in without signing forms that we didn't want to sign. And I had to handle it completely on my own when it happened in my early 30s, and I still had to work and had to expel every ounce of energy I had into getting a job done until I could get the right medication to help me out of it just enough to continue existing.
Trust me, if it was as easy as just forcing yourself into doing things that don't make you depressed, you'd have a whole lot less suicidal people. And you wouldn't have as much excitement around rTMS and Ketamine and other therapies that are starting to show real promise.
I've actually maintained a pretty healthy schedule, with regular swimming, intense hatha-yoga (more like gymnastics), spend a fair amount of time with people. At some point I've also became a workaholic.
How I felt — pretty horrible, all those nice things (unhealthy attitude to work is not nice, of course) barely helped to maintain a thin veneer of my social persona. Basically, most of the people who interacted with me would not know that I'm depressed. I think there are a lot of people like that, just outer shells.
I did not get medical help either in the form of therapy or drugs.
In the hindsight, I think that depression could have been helped at least a bit by going to the good therapist. I had some issues with rage a couple years later, and going to psychoanalyst really helped me a lot. Oh, you know what also helped a lot? It may sound stupid, but at some point I've started going to piano lessons and it really was beneficial somehow.
One thing I often wonder: What happens when a depressed person forces themselves to do things that are associated with not being depressed? Workout, dopamine fasting, social interaction.
When I observe myself in depressed phases and people who suffer from worse forms of depression, usually they do not work out, do not spend empathic time with others and constantly dopamine binge (via eating or other forms of quick pleasure).
Would a change of behavior/lifestyle change the depression?