Personal experience is that high intensity exercise mixed with a comforting ritual was what broke me out of a couple bouts of severe depression. When the streak was broken by an event or travel, and several days missing out on exercise followed, I would fall back into the depressive mood.

The most recent depressive bout was probably the most extreme I've gone through, and required a couple close friends to jump in, but again, routine exercise with comfortable bits of a routine mixed in - like making a cup of tea, making sure I have a podcast queued up, a book to read, and a handful of songs I like - has seemed to help pull me from the brink.

Now that I have eclipsed thirty years and I still am over 300 lbs, and some of the recent depression-like feelings, I am making a more of a cognisant action to keep working at this and to journal how I feel before, during, and after the routine.

I look forward to seeing this kind of work being taken a little more seriously as a means to treat depression as opposed to only medication and therapy.