I'm writing this because not only do I know many people that are currently suffering from depression but it's also something I have been battling with for a relatively long time and something that I've recently overcome. It was 5 physical and one mental change that forced me through the hell that is recovery and is now stopping me relapsing. The first one was:
Number one: Taking Vitamin D pills
The vast majority of people develop mental problems when they don't have access to ample amounts of sunshine. Humans were built to roam the plains of Africa where there's an abundance of natural light: if you live in the northern hemisphere chances are you live in a world where you receive very little sunlight. It cripples us both physically and mentally. Vitamin D pills help offset any other mental problems (Seasonal Affective Disorder, primarily) that you may have. Even if it only stops 1% of your symptoms it's a lot less to deal with. They cost very little. Going on anti-depressants too might be a good idea for the same reason.
Number two: Eating well, and eating lots
I had a love-hate relationship with food when I was depressed: I was eating but I really wasn't enjoying it. Like the masochistic prick I am I went from a diet of primarily pizza and ice cream to forcing myself to cook and eat every meal. It adds structure to a day, nourishes and helps with the lack of energy. The best diet I've found for myself is eating 5-8 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, eggs with almost every meal, two of my three meals a day being heavily protein based and fish at least twice a week. I'd advise that you eat such a diet: even if you hate it, chances are you hate everything right now including your current diet so I doubt it can get much worse.
Number three: Forcing exercise
Don't bother trying this one until you've got the other two sorted. Force yourself to do a sport, to run, to lift weights, whatever. It's about as fun as being hit by a car but chances are you feel like that daily anyway so you might as well achieve something whilst you feel like shit. After a bit it'll help regulate your emotions and add structure to your life.
Number four: Sleeping. Literally just sleeping
Sleep is extremely important to mental health. I had a massively fucked up sleeping pattern for about seven years. I then chose instead of fighting it, I'd fall asleep when I was tired and I'd wake up when I was ready. Every other fucker in my life can wait until I wake. After a while my circadian rhythm naturally reset and now I sleep well. I seriously suggest you make sure that you're sleeping in complete darkness and in complete silence with no possible things to wake you up, for as long or as little as you wish. Don't go to bed until you're properly tired and don't set any alarms. Waking up slowly rather than quickly will help immensely too. If you wake up during the night or if you feel sleepy during the day, do whatever your body feels like doing. Obviously some commitments may get in the way of this one; do what you can. You're probably lacking in them anyway seeing as you're depressed as fuck.
Number five: Slow adoption of good habits, slow breakdown of destructive habits
This one's a little trickier but it's definitely worth it. The way you do it is through consciously linking behaviours together in order to produce the desired outcome, Pavlov's dog style. An obvious example is when I feel hungry, I go find food. If you can link behaviours that you want to do immediately after certain actions you do in your day you can then cause them to effectively become rituals and you won't have to think about them, you'll just do them. I personally did it to establish a morning routine: I used to run around in the morning like a moron doing things in a random order and getting stressed. Now I know exactly what I'm doing for the first hour of waking up, because I established a very short routine (of 3 things) with a reward at the end of it, and then slowly linked behaviours together until I now have a routine (of 9 things) that encompass everything I need to do before I get on with my day. When this happens, it means you can slot good habits into the routine and very soon you'll adopt them. You do exactly the opposite for bad habits; decouple them from the reward (or decouple them from the punishment) and very soon they'll fall out of your routine. My example would be that I hated going to the gym because my friends would push me way too hard and the gym was always crowded. I then stopped going to the gym with those losers and then started going early in the morning so that it was near dead in there, and now I go to the gym rather than sit at home and feel bad about it!
The mental one: Accepting that your brain lies to you
The truth of the matter is that your brain is a massive arsehole. It tells you you're worthless when you're not, it stands in your way by making you feel bad when you should be doing stuff, it lies about literally every external stimulus it processes and then fucks with your emotional state for no reason. The big lie that it tells you is that your abstract thoughts and feelings are much more important than the reality that you live in, which is quite obviously bullshit. Hence, oppose it! Tell it to shut up when it tells you you're worthless, do whatever your goal is for the day even though it's making you feel terrible, ignore it when it tells you you're depressed etc.. In essence, don't let it's stupid and crazy whims change your behaviour.
A couple of notes
None of this will be easy. These points should be followed for about four weeks. Implementation of these should be in the order that they appear, and will be met with resistance throughout. Push through the resistance, imagine how happy you'll be when you're finally not feeling like a lifeless, grey void. Little steps forward, and don't fret when you get fall back down into the bottomless pit that is your current mental state. Your emotions are a bit like my girlfriend: they can both be beaten into submission. The last note is that just because you don't feel like doing something doesn't mean you can't. Have fun being a masochist!
