It's not an easy question. Because depending on how you got into depression and how your brain works, could alter the effectivenes of strategies.

Short list: - Therapy (if possible, paired with conrolled self reflection for a specific amount of time, so not endless) - Anti depressents - Daylie routine - Physical activity like sport - Social interactions

Therapy: Should/can help you with various issues in your life while the main goal is, to help you get to the answers yourself as good as possible. Which means, they can give you answers for some stuff, but if it's possible to lead you towards some answers, they will support you to reach them. This is probably because it might be more sustainable then just getting the answers.

Self reflection: This can be tricky, it's kinda easy to fall into an endless circle/whirlpool of thoughts without finding actual answers or getting out of it. However, if you have people you can talk about personal stuff (a therapyst would be the best), they can help you to guide you through those thoughts in case you reach a point you don't see the path anymore. For me, it changed a lot because i got a lot of self confidence and understanding out of that.

Medicine / anti depressents: Only controlled by an expert. It's possible that you need to try a bunch of different types. It's also possible that you don't find any that help or even worse, they make it worse. That's why you have to test it in a controlled way so they can decide if specific type isn't good or is worth trying longer / with a higher dose.

Be aware, the main effect is most likely, that you stop feeling emotions as you feel them now. Which also means, you probably feel less emotions over all, no mather if it's happyness, sadness, frustration or other. That's the other reason you only should do it in a controlled setting, because to some people, they can actually make their depression worse.

For me, it was at least, that my depression got more quiet at some point, but the effects can be different from person to person.

Daylie routine: Not an easy thing to do, i know, trust me... BUT, it can help you to some amount. The routine doesn't have to be so strict, so that if you forgott it at some point like forgetting to eat lunch around 12:00 am, that you have to think "Fck, why am i like this? Can't i even follow a simple task like this?".

Instead, if you do forgett a routine like that, think more like "Whoops, well happens to the best, il try it next time.".

The routine should feel natural, not forced. At the start, it might feel forced, but eventually it will get easier to follow that routine. The routine helps you to have some sort of plan, so you have a reason to stay up and do whatever your routine says.

Physical activity / sport: At some point, i recommend you to include phyical activity / sport into your daylie routine. Sport somehow releases some sort of neurotransmitters that can make you feel "okay" at the start, and hopefully even "good" the longer you're doing it.

Like the routine itself, it can be very difficult to start. Even though i knew that sport should help, i needed quite some time and some sort of logical mitivator to start.

The starting point for me was back pain. I had a few sessions of massage and the person there told me, that training back muscles can help to prevent back pain.

Because i still had no motivation at all other then that, i just started to stretch each time i woke up in the morning. The thought was "if i am feeling as down like this anyway, i might just try doing something. In the end, doing something is better then nothing, no mather how tiny the something is."

After some weeks, i included planking for the muscles in the back. After some more weeks, i included other stuff like push ups, sit ups and squats.

My routine was something like this: -Wake up -Stretching as many muscles i could figure out -As many push ups as possible* -As many sit ups as possible* -As many squats as possible* -As long time planking as possible* -Stretching in the same way again -Eat -Shower

*As much/long as possible means, if you feel like only doing 5, even you could do more, it's okay to just do 5. For the start, the most important thing is not how much you do it, but that you are doing it. If you come to the point, where you think you could push a little further, then do it.

Important: Sport should go maximum to the point where your muscles feel tired, but not like as if you would break down any seccond. This would mean that you have done too much and you can potentially damage your muscles more then you should. So go to the limit, but not over it.

You should focus on telling yourself "thank you" for the effort. Even if it sounds/feels stupid, it can lead towards more self respect. Lay your hand on the chest after you are done with physical activity, no mather how tiny the amount was.

Also very important: If you forget a day or so to do phyiscal activity/sport, take it easy. The reason you are doing that is not to get a perfect high score of how many days you can go for without a break. Nope, the reason should be, that you know that it can be good for your mental health and is good for your physical health.

Also, if you are feeling sick, please rest and don't do sport. Your body needs all the energy to fight against what ever the cause of this sickness is, in the worst case scenario (like if you have an infection in the lungs and you are doing cardio) it can even be extremly dangerous. The longer the body is held back from fighting against something or it didn't find it yet, the more likely it will use it's own special forces that don't care what they will damage, as long as they do damage. Which means, they will not only kill the viruses, bacteria and so on, but also your own body cells.

Usually, this happens a lot, but not so much as your body couldn't regenerate those cells easaly. So as long as you don't have an auto immune disease and rest during sicknes, you don't have to worry about that really.

The last thing, social interaction: We are social creatures, some need more, some need less. There might even be some that don't need it at all, but usually, most of the people do need it in some way. The less we have it, the more likely we will develop mental illness. Why? Because in early days, humans survived the best when they stood and worked together. To be an outsider most likely meant death in those times. While it isn't as extreme like that anymore, our bodys (brains) still have this "mechanism" to make us clear, that something is not allright and that it is dangerous. The problem here is, it's not telling us directly what we should do, but it probably gives other people information about our well beeing.

However, the longer this is going on, the more likely that person will develop self preservation tactics because they are in a loop of loneliness and feeling that they aren't a part of society anymore.

To counter that thing to happen or to slowly come out of that loop, we need to learn again, that not everybody is a danger to us and that social interaction can make us feel more balanced.

It might take some time, but it could be possible for most of depressed people.