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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

> "If obtaining X (career, significant relationship, etc.) does cure your "depression" then you didn't have clinical depression to begin with."

Depends. There's a decent amount of evidence that exercise can help reduce episodes of depression, even clinical depression. If obtaining X is obtaining a healthier body, then there's a decent chance you can help to lift yourself out of a funk by getting it. However, there's comfort in believing that something can't be helped, so I won't blame you if you don't believe me.

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To clarify my point... Exercise, good sleep, healthy diet, a social life, and a career, are some pre-requisites before you get to start talking about being CLINICALLY depressed. Situationally depressed, sure. But I'm making a distinction between someone who is depressed because they aren't meeting some basic needs (of which exercise is one), and the type of depression that persists DESPITE meeting these basic needs.

By no means am I saying that a clinically depressed individual "cant be helped". There's nothing comforting about that thought at all. Quite the contrary, those types of people DO exist and have found relief visa vi standard modes of care (CBT, and medication).

> "Quite the contrary, those types of people DO exist and have found relief visa vi standard modes of care (CBT, and medication)."

If a clinically depressed person tries both medication and exercise, and finds exercise helps them more, does that bother you? Are you suggesting that they can't have been clinically depressed?

Of course that wouldn't bother me. In fact, that's what I would expect.

If you're "depressed" but you don't workout, adding a solid workout plan to your life can be a bigger positive effect in your mood than therapy or medication.

But... if you're managing your life well, including exercising, and still feel depressed then that's what I am qualifying as "clinically depressed".

Of course we all get "depressed" when we eat like shit, don't have meaningful relationships, don't have a meaningful career, and never workout. That's to be expected.

> "if you're managing your life well, including exercising, and still feel depressed then that's what I am qualifying as "clinically depressed"."

This is the point I still can't understand. So in other words you're only clinically depressed if the only thing that helps you is external help (medication, CBT, etc...)? Why do you use that definition? It doesn't seem to be a definition shared by the psychiatry community or the psychology community.

I imagine there are "people diagnosed with clinically depression" who could cure their depression by exercising and/or changing their life in some way.

However, I know a couple people who do not fall into that bucket. Both of these people suffer bouts of totally debilitating depression. They are both respected within their communities, smart, successful, and have full lives. Both of them get a lot of exercise, both are extremely fit and have been their whole lives.

In my opinion, the way to look at this kind of depression is as a chemical imbalance. Theorizing that there's some missing piece in their lives seems ridiculous to me. And yes, antidepressants work.

> In my opinion, the way to look at this kind of depression is as a chemical imbalance.

Having lived my entire life dealing with depression, I believe you are wrong. Any "chemical imbalance" is a symptom, the physical expression of a mind suffering.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-illness-metaphor...

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