A quote from poet, writer, and essayist Maya Angelou provides much food for thought on the topic of depression: “No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”

In my experience, having a purpose is one of the best ways of combatting depression. And the busier your purpose makes you, the greater the effect. By that I mean, extrapolating Dr Wayne Dyer’s dictum, ‘Depression doesn’t cause inactivity; inactivity causes depression’.

Busy people have little time to mull over if they are failures or losers or hopeless or … choose a worry. Like people on a sinking lifeboat, they are too preoccupied with the task at hand to worry about the past or almost anything else, except surviving.

It is difficult to be busy if you haven’t got a reason. Simply rushing around doing ‘things’ is not the solution. There must be a reason for your activity. A goal. A purpose. Apart from anything, the reason for all the busyness, if it is something you want to do, is motivating in itself to keep you going.

It is difficult to consume yourself with negative thoughts about everything and to be sad and disillusioned, when you are heavily involved in achieving something you want. It is of course possible if it is simply a duty or work you are unhappy in, but have to do. Yet, even then it is difficult to do whatever it is and keep overthinking, (or ruminating, as it is known in academic circles).

If for whatever reason you don’t have an immediate purpose, being busy is still an antidote to depression. By keeping yourself busy, you have less time to wallow in the desperate thoughts and feelings produced by depression.