I think one of the tricky things about depression is how unique each person's experience with it can be. I can only speak from my own history. For me, medication was indispensable in getting me to a point where lifestyle changes could occur.
That being said, I do believe that exercising, eating right, maintaining a healthy sleep schedule, etc., all the boring lifestyle things have been key to preventing myself from slipping back into that depressed state, years after stopping medication.
Completely agree. I worked in a factory for a while, and while it was worse in many ways than my current tech job, it was so much easier to just show up and do the work.
The word decimate comes from the Latin decimatio, which was a form of military discipline where one of every ten men would be killed. So although we usually think of 'decimate' as meaning removing some large proportion of something, it can also still mean removing 10 percent!
That being said, I do believe that exercising, eating right, maintaining a healthy sleep schedule, etc., all the boring lifestyle things have been key to preventing myself from slipping back into that depressed state, years after stopping medication.