"There are always medications but studies have shown that if you treat your depression with drugs, you're likely to get depressed again sooner and the next depression is likely to be deeper... until the medicines don't have enough effect anymore."
You know some of us with actual mental illness really get our knickers in a twist when people start saying we don't need our medicines we just need to Try REALLLLLLLY hard and we'll get better.
If having a sucky life makes you depressed then you aren't mentally ill, you just have a sucky life, it's normal to be depressed then, heck if you are on the proper medication for chronic depression you should be depressed when your life sucks. If all you need is help, love, reassurance and planning to get out of your problem then more power to you. When you have a stable job, loving spouse, safe clean home and pleasant relations with your extended family and you sleep all day because you think if you get up you are liable to slit your wrists that is mental illness.
Anyway what you have and what I have are two very different diseases that happen to share a name, sometimes telling one from the other is difficult so everyone owes it to themselves to explore all the options for treatment. That being said don't call my drugs dangerous and ineffective and I won't call your therapy hippie bullcrap ok?