Here are a few tips for how to cope with depression when it doesn’t go away as fast as you would like. The first tip is to adjust your expectations to be more realistic. Clinical depression is a medical condition of one of your internal organs: the brain. The condition took time to form and it will take some time to dissolve.
When does clinical depression begin getting better? This varies from person to person. In my work as a psychologist it often seems that people have a glimmer of hope once they make an appointment to see someone for an evaluation. After the first session, a sense of the future being positive kicks in because a person sees (1) that they are not alone in the fight; (2) there is well-worn trail already blazed for hiking out of depression. This leads to the second tip for how to cope with depression when it seems to hang on too long: Get an evaluation from a psychologist so that you know what kind of depression you are dealing with and have someone to walk the wilderness trail with you.