I suppose every person who suffers with depression asks this question almost every day. I’ve been depressed since I was sixteen. I’m now sixty-one. So – does it get better? I’m sure I’m ‘supposed’ to say yes, but it really doesn’t. Like everyone else, you try everything over the years; take all the advice, but the truth is you still feel the same after every effort to change. You’d have more luck trying to change the colour of your eyes or growing an extra limb. It’s part of who you are. Something you have to live with – like being in a wheelchair or being blind. I think in the end you cope best by not fighting it; not trying to get rid of depression as if it’s a head cold. As if it’s something that can be overcome. The hopelessness you feel comes from your failure to change or cure it. It’s based on the false belief that it can be ‘overcome’. Depression doesn’t get better by itself (no matter what ‘they’ might tell you, or what the books say). It is not improved by exercise, or diet or drugs. Your best way forward is to be depressed and do what you can when you can. Feel the pointlessness and do it anyway. Do things for yourself as if you’re doing them for someone else. But accept that your life will be harder (more challenging!) than anyone else’s and stop putting yourself under pressure to feel something you can’t.