Symptoms of depression are bad news for difficult self-improvement projects. Sometimes you need your emotional system to stop punching you in the face before you can climb out of the hole. Negative emotions can easily slip from encouraging action into preventing it. And without the capability to feel pleasure, even success will seem pretty empty.
Sometimes your life is actually great and the failure is in your perception. See the unreasonable effectiveness of applying basic rationality to your thinking, i.e. CBT.
Relief from depression is not happiness, it’s neutrality, the space to work, and the ability to feel the fruits of your work.
However the neutrality of the self depends on a fertile environment within which to grow a new life structure. As someone described in a different post about 'shit life syndrome': there are places physically, and I would argue as an extension also socially, where the true problem and root cause is outside.
Care should also be taken to have a society that builds for the success of all, and helps to place individuals within good situations. The help from a drug to fix a temporary problem or a genetic disease might still be required but it isn't a one shot magic bullet.
Sometimes your life is actually great and the failure is in your perception. See the unreasonable effectiveness of applying basic rationality to your thinking, i.e. CBT.
Relief from depression is not happiness, it’s neutrality, the space to work, and the ability to feel the fruits of your work.