This is the only reasonable response in any thread on mental illness. Depression is too much of an important issue to not see a doctor, and unless we know OP's full history, any number of things could work or not work.
Primary care physicians prescribe SSRIs all the time. You probably want to see a primary care physician anyway and get a thorough checkup and blood work to rule out physical causes. Your family doc or internist should also be able to refer you to a psychiatrist (who will usually offer more complex drug therapy) or to a talk therapist or both.
That is better than nothing; really you should have a relationship with your PCP, I think I did have a 15 minute exam when I got an SSRI prescription, but I had seen that doc for three years and had talked about SSRIs for a while. I chose to take them because I know my life was about to get turned upside down and wanted to be proactive about dealing with it.
The main SSRI counterindication is that people with psychosis, bipolar, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder are likely to get worse (manic) with SSRI treatment. A GP can screen for this and be right most of the time.
Unfortunately this is a disease like Diabetes that gets progressively worse, treatment with antipsychotic drugs might slow this. Psychotics tend to hate antipsychotic drugs and putting that together with it being almost impossible to force people take them many people don't get treated. They shouldn't get a script from a GP, they should see a psychiatrist.
The key to SSRI success is not the length of the first appointment, but the followup. You should have at least one and maybe several followup appointments to adjust dosage, medication, also consider a psych referral.
Can be attributed to lack of trust in the medical system. Just look at doctor's willingness to give out opoids. Doctor's first line of defense for depression is SSRIs, if those don't work they often try Serequel or worse.
A doctor won't analyze your life like a therapist would and ensure you have a good diet, sleeping schedule, friends, career, family, etc. For 99% of people these are the causes of depression and can be remidied without medication.
And don't chalk this up to a USA problem. I'm from Canada and my doctor is a pill pusher.
I think the issue here is that to most of us, this isn't a thread on mental illness.
There's a difference between the common usage of the word "depression" and the mental illness of clinical depression/major depression/major depressive disorder.
There is a lot that can be done to fight what many people would refer to as depression, which is much more mild than clinical depression.
Especially in more severe cases, attempting to deal with it yourself is dangerous. Think about it: depression often creates a lack of motivation and a feeling of not being in control. If you try something and it fails, then what? Then you blame yourself for failing, you feel even less motivated and even less in control, and you're possibly worse off then when you started. (Not to mention: you learn the wrong lesson about failure.)
IMHO, the very premise that you can "hack" around depression is flawed. If you tore your rotator cuff, came down with a serious fever, or broke a bone, would you try to "hack" around it? I doubt it, unless you're out in the wilderness and days from care - and at that, you'd likely seek proper care when you get back to civilization. Mental health is no different; we just have a societal problem treating it with the same seriousness and urgency.
Many people struggling with mental health issues need an external reference point along with expert advice / supervision. A good support network of friends / family provides the former. Ideally, doctors provide both; they at least provide the latter, if they're at all half-decent.
Now, it's not at all the same thing, but: I struggled with anxiety - like, full-on debilitating panic attacks - for years, trying to "hack" around it. It would get better, then I'd relapse. In the end, I finally swallowed my pride, went to a doctor, and followed their advice. If I'd done that years ago, I'd have measurably improved my quality of life for years. Now, I'm just happy I didn't wait longer. Yes, I had some measure of success in "hacking" around my mental health issues, and yes, I was probably better off than if I did nothing. That said, why would you not just use the best tools available?
It's like choosing to write your own text editor from scratch just to code - you can do it, and you'll maybe even learn something, and there's a remote chance that you'll create a better tool than was previously available. Most likely, however, you'll spend years going in circles for no particularly good reason. That's why you seek help: not because you absolutely can't do anything about it yourself, but because, quite honestly, life is too short to waste.
Now, once you regain a measure of control - possibly with the help of therapy, SSRIs, etc. - you're in a position to start talking about "how do I help myself manage this?" Here, however, you're not "hacking" around anything: you're applying well-tested methods (exercise regimens, proper sleep, relaxation / meditation techniques, etc.), possibly in conjunction with SSRIs or therapy, to slowly but surely rebuild your sense of control and agency.
Perhaps in 10 or 20 years, we'll better understand neurobiology and have much better tools to help with mental health issues. Right now, this is what we have.