information about happiness. My literature search on this subject yielded over 13,000 scholarly research articles and over one thousand books. Advice about how to be happy floods the internet daily with simplistic listicles and click-bait articles that make it all seem so easy.

But their advice, like telling a sad person to think about all the reasons they shouldn’t be sad, or a depressed person to just get up and exercise, doesn’t work. Thinking about the good things in life can sometimes ameliorate sad feelings, but usually, trying to grasp at happiness when in the grip of a depressed mood leads to failure. And while the research on exercise’s positive effect on depression is robust and persuasive, depressed people lack the drive to work out: that’s what depression means.

These suggestions, though well-meant, amount to telling depressed persons to snap out of it—or it’s their fault. This shames the sufferer, making things worse. And the resulting family strife doesn’t help. Well-intentioned spouses and parents who believe that snapping out of it actually is within a depressed person’s power will eventually succumb to exasperation and resignation.