So will travel magically cure your depression and anxiety? Well, maybe but probably not. No amount of travel will cure the underlying issues of why you are depressed. But I feel, at least for me, travel goes a long way towards maintaining a healthy attitude and outtake on life.
In order to fully enjoy travel, I think you first need to get the rest of your life in order. This means finding a source of income that's enough to provide for your needs. But before this, I believe you really need to think about what you need.
Get rid of that competitive and entitled attitude. You know, so an so has a 3,000 square foot house and a brand new BMW so I really need and deserve to have that too.
While I would like to have a big house and luxury car, I thought how much happier a big house and luxury car would really make me over living in my condo and driving a Subaru. When I really thought about it, the answer for me was not a whole lot.
People often purchase more than they need to fill a void but without accepting who they are and finding their true love, it only temporarily fills that void and then they need to buy more and more and eventually most people end up in a ton of debt. After this they lose their things and become more depressed than ever (unless of course they are super rich or know someone super rich that constantly bails them out).
Once I got rid of this baggage by just focusing on what I really needed, I was able to focus on finding what I really enjoyed in life and stopped spending money on things that were pointless for me because so and so has them or did it. For me I really thought about what I needed and came up with these main items.
The above list is all I could come up with for true needs. I currently have enough money to pay for the above needs which once you obtain enough income to meet your basic needs your primary source of depression for a lot of people is now eliminated.
I can't really tell you how to make enough to meet your personal basic needs if you're not but that's not the point of this article. The point of this article is to help you decide if travel might help with any remaining depression you have.
So then I thought about what makes me happy. The first thing that popped into my mind was traveling around seeing new things, especially new nature. If this isn't the case for you, then travel probably won't resolve your depression.
But since it was for me this added to my list of needs. I needed some good camping and travel gear. However, since travel and camping are my source of true happiness, this a very good investment for me personally.
As I've thought more and more about each purchase, this has exponentially made me happier. As I quit wasting money of in the moment purchases this left me more money for purchases that would actually make a real difference in increasing my level of happiness and reducing depression.
I'm not the best writer. But here are my take away points. Do you genuinely enjoy travel (like you're not just doing it for that selfie to post on your Instagram to make your friends jealous)? Do you genuinely enjoy cheap travel (camping, staying at cheap hotels, etc.) and all that really matters to you is getting to see the new scenery? If you answered yes to these, then once you meet your basic needs, I think there is a pretty good chance travel will help with your depression.
But always keep in mind that travel is unlikely to ever magically fix underlying issues of depression (not having enough income, relationship issues with a significant other, etc.) It may temporarily distract you from such issues but you will still need to deal with them when you return.