OP, your dad sounds exactly like my mom. Though instead of mental issues she blames the Nepal earthquake and India - Pakistan rift on my weight.

I have mental health issues myself and EVERYONE thinks that telling me to lose weight and exercise will help. I began training with a personal trainer 3 times a week and went to the gym 3 times a week then spent one day sleeping all damn day. I still wanted to kill myself, I have lost 22kg so far and I still exercise on occasion but not as much. It has come down to a combination of medication, therapy and mild exercise to help keep me stable. OP, figure out what will work best for YOU! Try to educate your father if you feel he can learn to understand your situation better. Everyone has an opinion and most of the time they try to mean well. Sadly it just comes across mean. I hope you find what works for you and you get some relief.

Stop using your issues as a crutch and get a life

YDI fatty. Lol. Not really though. Your dads a ****

An unhealthy body can contribute to an unhealthy mind. I am not saying exercise and eating right will immediately cure you of everything that is going on, far from it, but it can help. And hey, at worst a healthy body will not make anything worse. I struggled a lot with depression, two things I've found helpful are getting daily sunlight (and not the walk from your house to the car), science has linked bipolarity with seasonal changes in many people, meaning in the summer their depression lessens and in the winter it increases. All other factors considered it seems to be getting more sunlight in summer that improves their symptoms. So do try to go outside, maybe take a peaceful daily walk if possible. The exercise most strongly linked to a higher sense of mental well-being is yoga. Psychologists are now really beginning to study the effects of yoga on long-term mental health problems, including depression. I took it for a semester at my college (I had to take a gym class), and it actually made me feel significantly better. It won't work for everyone, but it is worth looking into, again it will not make anything worse so what do you have to lose? I think it works so well because it's really peaceful, you do a lot of deep breathing and listen to calming music the entire time. There is some spirituality involved in it, not really a religious thing, but more a few words intended to bring peace, like "namaste" (peace be with you), and setting a goal for the day with your workout (something along the lines of "I want to feel lighter" or "I want to feel less depressed"). Part of it I feel is wanting to be less depressed by engaging in the exercise, focusing on letting all your troubles wash away, of shutting off your mind at least for the duration of the workout, and really focusing on not thinking, just moving. Once you learn to do it during the exercise it becomes easier to do in day-to-day life when things become overwhelming. All that being said, also see a psychologist/psychiatrist. Get on meds, and do not stop taking them without talking to them about it first. A lot of people regress and end up worse than ever because they feel better so they stop taking their meds, meanwhile it was the meds making them feel better. At the same time as you are working with a trained psychological professional, try alternative options as well, at worst healthy living will not harm you.

To describe depression... It's this lingering sadness... like if a loved one died a month ago. After a month you're no longer in that state of constant tears (assuming average recovery times) but you still feel that sense of loss and sadness. You still cry occasionally, you're still sad, but your semi-functional... you attend work and keep it hidden, but it's there. You can laugh with friends, but it's still there. You can push it to the back of your mind for periods, but it always comes rushing back when you're alone with your thoughts. No matter how much you go out with friends, or have a SO to comfort you, at the end of the day, no matter if you did (insert list of favorite activities here done with your favorite people) it all comes rushing back. Then you have the fact that you don't want to do anything. You'd prefer to spend your entire day in the house, or even in bed, doing nothing. Now, if this was just going to work... well a lot of people don't want to do that. This is regardless of the activity. I want you to think of your absolute most favorite place to go, now imagine someone, your best friend in the world, offers to take you there for a week, all expenses paid, and your job says go for it. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing your favorite thing with your favorite person for free, despite all that you'd prefer to sit in your house. It honestly feels like a chore just thinking about going. You have a feeling of existential dread just thinking of walking out the front door. You blame yourself. You feel guilty for feeling like this. Every time you turn down the chance to go out with your friends you feel as if you have let them down. Yet at the same time, when you do force yourself to go, even if you manage to seem like you're having the time of your life, you feel guilty for not having fun. If you fail at seeming like you're having the time of your life, you feel guilty for ruining their fun. All the while you also feel guilty for not being happy... I have lost count of the amount of times I had the internal monologue of "I have a decent life, I have a roof over my head, I have food on the table, I have a job, I have an SO, I have friends, I have family... what right do I have to be miserable?" This train of thought does nothing to spur me to happiness, it just makes me more depressed for being a shitty person for not being happy despite all the wonderful things and people I have in my life. You live in fear. You imagine that one day your friends are going to get sick of dealing with you and forget about you. You try to avoid this by wearing a perpetual fake smile, even if you feel miserable. You're still pretty sure they can tell, but you make the effort to hide it. You wouldn't blame them if they stopped talking to you, look at yourself, you're a miserable ****. A husk of a person, God why do they still talk to you? Hell, you wouldn't even talk to you. You hate yourself. From all of the above you can tell, you think your friends should just forget about you and move on with their lives. You feel guilty for your very emotions. You don't want to leave the house. You know you're just some worthless **** up, a waste of air, a waste of their love. This feeling, is every goddamn day (some days are a bit better, some worse) for years at a time. There is no "getting over it" or "willing it away". It's a chemical imbalance in the brain. Your brain produces these chemicals, some of which are for happiness. Your brain has had a major reduction in these happiness ones, you are physically incapable of feeling as happy as other people, in the same way someone who is paralyzed is physically incapable of walking. That guy in the wheelchair can try to move his toes all he wants, no matter how hard he wills it, they will not move. A person with depression can will themselves to be happy harder than any other person in the history of humankind, it will not make the chemicals appear in his/her brain. With medication the chemicals can start being produced normally. However, it can take years to find the right medication, and to find one with no/minimal side-effects.

Even if confirmed by doctors, a mental health condition can be helped or even cured depending on what it is by exercise.

living an active lifestyle does improve mental health.

My mother says this to me too. I am not overweight but she still says I'm just a lazy bitch and that's why I am mentally retarded, I have OCD . The problem with the older generation is that they have been told those same mean words and excuses for years because mental problems were not widely accepted for many years. That being said, he has no excuse for what he said. If you are old enough get out of his presence. If you are younger like me try to just ignore it and wait until your older to tell him how wrong he was.

Depression is tough to deal with. I've been there. And no jokes. Exercise and changing my diet helped a lot. It *helped* it wasn't the cause nor a means to an end. You still have some work to do to get through your issues, but exercise and a correct diet has helped me keep myself upbeat. I've been off meds now for 5 years and even though I still have bouts of depression, I can snap myself out of it quite quickly with the exercises (mental) that I was taught and I usually hit the gym if I feel like that since a little sweat makes me feel even better after. good luck OP