Humble recognition

Sometimes recognizing a person's depression can suffice to help them, even if temporarily.

Some of the reading I'm currently doing makes me feel better as it acknowledges depression as a disease we know very little about, in fact we know A LOT LESS THAN WE LIKE TO THINK WE DO.

That last part is the most important part; the recognition must be done with the modesty that we do not know.

The all too common patronizing "recognition" which goes something like "I haven't had it so I don't know" (IE. "We're not interested, just get back to functionality and we can all forget about it.") is hollow at best, disingenuous at worse.

To recognize that someone else is suffering something we do not know and that our concern is two-fold:
A) That the person is suffering.
B) That we are ignorant about that suffering, and that that ignorance is a faultof ours.

Pretending we know what depression entails and how to "treat" it in order to make the sufferer feel better can often have the opposite effect, because the simple "go see your doctor - take some meds - do some CBT - get more active - socialize more" is just that, overly simplistic. The simplicity of it can make the depressed person feel even more depressed.

Taking meds, doing therapy, getting active, and socializing doesn't take away that a person may genuinely feel depressed about things like the dysfunctional world we live in, about how their life (as active and social as it may be) does not make them content.

So yes, depression is a disease with biological components, but it is much more than that, and that much more is what we don't know.