[Kirkwood]

"Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk," Honglei Chen, who led the study, said in a statement.

It doesn't suggest a cause and effect at all. It could be that depressed people tend to drink more diet sodas because they are depressed about being overweight.

[thecodont]

It doesn't suggest a cause and effect at all. It could be that depressed people tend to drink more diet sodas because they are depressed about being overweight.

Or, depression leads to overeating, overeating leads to excess weight, excess weight leads to dieting and thus consumption of diet sodas.

What sort of person drinks black coffee?

[madison10]

It doesn't suggest a cause and effect at all. It could be that depressed people tend to drink more diet sodas because they are depressed about being overweight.

Exactly. Drinking the diet soda keeps one from eating a sweet which one is NOT supposed to eat if one is overweight. One could be very depressed from being overweight to start with.

[null and void]

It doesn't suggest a cause and effect at all. It could be that depressed people tend to drink more diet sodas because they are depressed about being overweight.

True. Correlation is not causation.

Still, it's easy enough for someone who is depressed to switch to coffee, or even horrors!, water and see if it helps.

I've learned through bitter experience that consuming aspartame is invariably followed by worsening depression.

Some people go bananas when they hear this, some even go grilled chicken with red whine...