How to recover from depression

This 2018 talk from Dr Yapko, "Keys to unlock depression: Why skills work better than pills" - [this video] - suggests a multidimensional viewpoint rather than purely biological. He says the causes are: 1. Biological. He says "Yes, biology matters, but surprisingly not as much as you would think, that when we look at what’s termed genetic variance, how much do genes play a role in depression? Is there a depression gene? No. Are there genes that make people vulnerable to depression? Definitely. So if we look at biochemistry, yes it’s a factor. If we look at disease processes, there are many diseases where depression is a predictable consequence. If we look at drugs, there are many drugs that have depression as a predictable side effect. Biology matters, but when we look at genetic variance, that figure is between .3 and .4. That represents a mild, moderate at best, genetic influence." 2. Psychological. In particular what is known as "Attributional/Explanatory style" ( [link] ), i.e. the person's habitual or reflexive way of attaching meaning to life events. He says "It isn't what happens to people that increases their risk for depression so much as how they interpret and respond to what happens to them." 3. Social At the end, he says "the goal is not to cure depression, the goal is to learn how to manage your mood. You don't exercise once and now you're done with the exercise thing."

This reminds me of a talk by Michael Yapko titled "Keys to unlocking depression" [1], where he said: "My first job was working in a psychiatric facility and I was the admissions person. It was my job to admit new patients to the unit. ... "I would interview people who had been through the worst experiences that you could imagine. People who had been raped, tortured, mutilated, people who had fled their homelands literally with bullets whizzing past their head, people who lost their entire family in one fell swoop in a plane crash or a car crash, people who had suffered the worst adversities you could possibly imagine. "When I would interview these people it would be easy to appreciate why they were broken, why they were so despairing, why they had given up on life. ... But what fascinated me clinically ... was when I interviewed people who had been through these horrific experiences, people who probably should have been depressed but they weren't, and I wanted to know why not. What is it about the way these people are coping that somehow serves to insulate them against depression?"* [1] - [this video]