I believe that wisdom requires that we are logically intelligent as well as emotionally intelligent.

The modern society ploughs a lot of money; effort and time into helping people develop logical intelligence since it is often needed for academic excellence and economical growth.

Compare that to the effort put into helping people develop emotional wellbeing. At most we are all left to develop emotionally with very little guidance.

If we are lucky to have parents with some emotional intelligence, they may just pass that down to us, but this is often passed down by accident since very few people are actively thinking of its importance to the wellbeing of the society.

If i consider the history of Africa, where I have my roots. developing emotional values were part and parcel of learning to become a responsible adult. It was important to know how to work with feelings of sadness and fear (although many ideologies were often slightly misguided).

But now most African countries have bought into the rat race to acquire academic knowledge and financial stability. The side effect is that they also now undervalue emotional intelligence.

I believe that the increase in the experience of depression is strongly tied to a widely spread poor knowledge of depression itself

No amount of academic genius is enough to help people secure a resilient ability to beat depression.

Feeling better can be a passing few hours or a day of doing something that helps, but we all know how it returns and can do so rather quickly. I can be in tears in my car, right after a workout at the gym. I don’t mind exercise so that’s why I used that, but if you’ve never exercised, it may not the be option you choose for that little bit of down time from depression. I think any suggestion is helpful, but again, a huge hurdle and a passing feeling of not being depressed for a short period of time. Maybe this is so for me and others who are more depressed. Not everyone is depressed on the same level.

What helps me in day to day living (sometimes), is to be prepared a day in advance for what I need to do the next day to not make it seem monumental to get whatever it is done.

What lifts my spirits, a talk with a friend who makes me laugh. Yes, laughter can be the best medicine (momentarily). With that said, I will watch more comedy shows. Sure, you can be laughing one moment, then crying the next, but I do find that laughter helps me a little. You’ve got to psychoanalyze yourself to find out what works for you, even if it’s in the short term.

As others have commented, sure, things listed to do to feel less depressed can work, but there’s still that hurdle to do them. I do set small goals, but sometimes I don’t even get them done, but what I don’t do is beat myself up over it. It doesn’t help. Don’t be hard on yourself. Being hard on yourself is like beating yourself up. Now that certainly doesn’t feel good:)

I don’t know if that figure has changed at this writing, but I found it mind-boggling, as someone who doesn’t take medication of any kind.

This is what I know. Doctors usually want to treat the symptom: the depression itself, rather than look for the origin of the problem. However, depression is usually a sign that there is something wrong somewhere in the body: that there’s an imbalance. I think this is most obvious, in my experience, when someone has just had surgery and he/she is not only recovering from the physical/cutting of tissue, but also trying to recover from the shock of trauma and the overloading of the body with drugs. (I’ve witnessed great levels of depression in people who’ve just had surgery).

I really appreciate the author’s references to Omega-3, sunlight exposure, sufficient sleep, etc.

We were born to be in balance and we need to be on the look-out when we’re not: depression is one of our major clues.