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Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

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Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#11

Post by joe_mamba »

xnorswap wrote: post #7
joe_mamba wrote: post #3

How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercise and outdoor time - good sleep hygiene - regular healthy social interactions - eliminate environmental stressors (job/financial stress, relationship stress, noise pollution, etc) Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under yo…

The trouble is, this reads like "Just don't be depressed", since this is almost effectively a list of (anti-) symptoms of depression.

No, it isn't like "Just don't be depressed", I know it's very difficult for people to get all of those combined, that's what I said you should strive to get all of them if you want to cure your depression.

SSRIs or exercise won't make your financial or relationship issues go away so you'll still be depressed unless you can fix all the issues bothering you.

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#12

Post by staticassertion »

joe_mamba wrote: post #3

How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercise and outdoor time - good sleep hygiene - regular healthy social interactions - eliminate environmental stressors (job/financial stress, relationship stress, noise pollution, etc) Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under yo…

I think this is true, but oof that's a heavy list. For one thing, food, alcohol, drugs, and stimulants, all have addictive properties that are almost certainly comorbid with depression. Dropping those is rough.

Exercise is perhaps one of the easier ones but, personally, I've found it incredible to reflect on how absolutely bad my childhood "gym" classes were. At no point did we actually... go to a gym. That was never normalized for us. We sort of just learned how to do jumping jacks when we were told to, that sort of thing, and it was all structured for us. There was no habit forming, no "how to do this once there's no one around to structure it for you". In my experience, people who go to the gym get "brought in" by someone in their life who can help them build that structure. For someone missing it, well, you're truly on your own in a rather stressful environment.

Sleep hygiene is good but, again, I suspect tricky here.

Regular social interactions, another heavy lift! What do you do to build up a network of people in your life? Social structures don't just magically appear, and once again, they're usually just handed to you for most of your life and once those fall away you're in quite a spot trying to recover or build anew.

I think the environmental stressors may be the roughest, hard to say. Eliminating financial stress is something that can take decades. Noise pollution? That's really quite out of my control.

All of these are great things to work on but I suppose my read of them is "wow, being depressed seems really fucking hard if you have to do these things to get out of it".

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#13

Post by Sharlin »

joe_mamba wrote: post #11
xnorswap wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is, this reads like "Just don't be depressed", since this is almost effectively a list of (anti-) symptoms of depression.

No, it isn't like "Just don't be depressed", I know it's very difficult for people to get all of those combined, that's what I said you should strive to get all of them if you want to cure your depression. SSRIs or exercise won't make your financial or relationship issues go away so you'll still be depressed unless you can fix all the issues bothering you.

The problem is that depression by definition makes it 100x harder to do any of those things.

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#14

Post by Aaargh20318 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #3

How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercise and outdoor time - good sleep hygiene - regular healthy social interactions - eliminate environmental stressors (job/financial stress, relationship stress, noise pollution, etc) Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under yo…

I can't remember where I read it, but it always stuck with me: most cases of depression can be solved with a one-time deposit of $20 million in the patient's bank account.

A lot of the time, what is diagnosed as depression is actually a very valid reaction to being in a shitty situation. I myself ended up at a psychiatrist due to being stuck in a shitty job with me being too exhausted and anxious to do anything about it. What eventually 'cured' me wasn't any of the sessions with the shrink but being laid off in a company restructuring with a nice severance package that allowed me to take a couple of months to decompress and look for a job that was a better fit.

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#15

Post by joe_mamba »

Sharlin wrote: post #13
joe_mamba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't like "Just don't be depressed", I know it's very difficult for people to get all of those combined, that's what I said you should strive to get all of them if you want to cure your depression. SSRIs or exercise won't make your financial or relationship issues go away so you'll still be depressed unless you can fix all the issues bothering you.

The problem is that depression by definition makes it 100x harder to do any of those things.

Well yeah, but you gotta start somewhere, and it's not gonna get better if you drink cola, beer everyday and stay up until 2AM watching netflix.

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#16

Post by celeritascelery »

bananaflag wrote: post #8
joe_mamba wrote: post #3

How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercise and outdoor time - good sleep hygiene - regular healthy social interactions - eliminate environmental stressors (job/financial stress, relationship stress, noise pollution, etc) Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under yo…

> good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants How does one get rid of the excitement of the expectation of eating chips or drinking cola etc?

GLP-1

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#17

Post by joe_mamba »

bananaflag wrote: post #8
joe_mamba wrote: post #3

How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercise and outdoor time - good sleep hygiene - regular healthy social interactions - eliminate environmental stressors (job/financial stress, relationship stress, noise pollution, etc) Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under yo…

> good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants How does one get rid of the excitement of the expectation of eating chips or drinking cola etc?

You stop buying them during your weekly grocery shopping.

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#18

Post by Sharlin »

pjerem wrote: post #5

I don't get what's new ? It's a known fact that exercise and good lifestyle are good for the mental health. But isn't the inability to maintain a good lifestyle one of the first symptoms of depression ?

Exactly. Depression is defined in part as being the inability to effectively do those things.

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#19

Post by rincebrain »

joe_mamba wrote: post #15
Sharlin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that depression by definition makes it 100x harder to do any of those things.

Well yeah, but you gotta start somewhere, and it's not gonna get better if you drink cola, beer everyday and stay up until 2AM watching netflix.

I think GP's point is that "just do it" shows a lack of understanding that an inability to "just do X" is often a symptom of depression that leads to people not talking about it, because people who haven't experienced it think you must be lying about having decided to do something and not actually then doing it.

Consider: there was a study about a guy who was paralyzed from the waist down, who got an implant to bypass the injury, and with a year+ of walking with the implant, could eventually walk to a limited extent without the implant.[1]

This suggests walking can be used to treat loss of ability to walk. Unfortunately, there's a catch-22 there...

...and so too with inability to make yourself do anything.

[1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5

Re: Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows

#20

Post by [deleted] »

joe_mamba wrote: post #3

How to solve most cases of depression, make sure to get all these (if you can): - good diet with no junk food, alcohol, drugs and stimulants - regular exercise and outdoor time - good sleep hygiene - regular healthy social interactions - eliminate environmental stressors (job/financial stress, relationship stress, noise pollution, etc) Of course, not everyone can have everything and some of those aren't 100% under yo…

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