> The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business".
I'm guessing you are in the US? There is a lot of medical advice here (UK, and Europe more widely) which is essentially “eat better and move around more”. A great many don't listen to that, but it is definitely said.
> When I stop compulsively eating and drinking [and do some] exercise
This is a key issue: not what doctors are prescribing but what people do to self-medicate. The harmful side of self-care when “a bit of what you like does you good” becomes overconsumption and underactivity. It can be even worse for those of us with significant mental issues over the norm (bit of a bipolar pillock myself, got a piece of paper saying so & everything, and like you describe with depression I find the right exercise, while not at all a panacea, helps regulate my mind quite a lot as well as stopping my body falling apart).
even in the US a lot of doctors say this because it is usually less of a pain in the ass than filling out referral paperwork to specialists that cost more for the patient anyways.
part of the problem in the US is that at least some medical practices/hospitals measure patient satisfaction as a metric to evaluate performance, but what is good for the patient and what makes them happy is not necessarily correlated. it's a factor into how the opioid epidemic got as bad as it did in the US. and also i'd imagine if you kept telling people this for decades and they didn't listen people might just not bother.
I'm guessing you are in the US? There is a lot of medical advice here (UK, and Europe more widely) which is essentially “eat better and move around more”. A great many don't listen to that, but it is definitely said.
> When I stop compulsively eating and drinking [and do some] exercise
This is a key issue: not what doctors are prescribing but what people do to self-medicate. The harmful side of self-care when “a bit of what you like does you good” becomes overconsumption and underactivity. It can be even worse for those of us with significant mental issues over the norm (bit of a bipolar pillock myself, got a piece of paper saying so & everything, and like you describe with depression I find the right exercise, while not at all a panacea, helps regulate my mind quite a lot as well as stopping my body falling apart).