"Mental health" and "making an effort" are two dangerous terms to combine in the same argument. Just getting out of bed every morning can already be a big effort for many people with mental health problems, much bigger effort than exercise is for many sane folks; it should be appreciated as such.

It's something you can't understand without experiencing yourself. Always sounds pathetic from the perspective of people who have lived their lives having okay mental health.

Your point is taken, but one must remember that in the end we are all of us responsible for our own lives.

There's a reason why people who lift joke that the heaviest weight in the gym is the front door.

One approach that has worked well for many is establishing positive habits to displace negative ones. That takes a while, but there are tricks to help, like having a group to hold you accountable.

Accountability works for procrastination and things that, as you say, can be described as negative habits or character traits. Depression is a completely different beast.

Depression is like I'm sitting on your chest and tell you that breathing is easy and all you need is to do it rhythmically.

Depression is like that day your brain doesn't function properly after not sleeping during the night, but every day for years and regardless how much you sleep.

Depression is not a bad habit, just like the flu is not a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Agreed.

Furthermore, what is somewhat amazing is that, on a Good Day (or less depressed or in-remission day, or whatever one wants to call it), one can also look back on a Bad Day, just yesterday, and be mystified why that seemingly dead simple task [1], seemed completely overwhelming to the point of impossibility.

Like many diseases of the brain, including dementias and schizophrenia, the sufferer can seem and even be fully functional when the disease isn't (as) active, including being prone to falling for the same fallacies as everyone else.

In the throes of the symptoms, however, the brain just isn't working the same, so it's not fair, compassionate, nor reasonable to extrapolate about habit formation or responsibility from an unafflicted brain. It can get a bit too easy to blame the victim that way.

None of this is to say that encouraging good habit formation or increased patient self direction/determination can't be helpful, when possible. I'm just saying not to start with that as an assumption and that it likely isn't even possible for the more severe cases.

[1] taking out the trash, running the dishwasher, or even just getting out of bed

I'd argue that psychedelics aren't a no-effort solution at all. These experiences are at times very emotionally draining and uncomfortably introspective. The integration period then requires a further amount of the above. The interesting thing is, a guided experience tends to leads to the habits you listed above. In short, the experience can be seen as a catalysts to a maintainable lifestyle which facilitates recovery, not as the mode of recovery in itself.