Typically... people who are diagnosed with a mental illness, are not "curable," per se. They may make improvements... but rarely will ever be completely cured of said issue. People with depression have the greatest chance of having a turn around without medication since there are many kinds of depression. Seasonal depressions ( like in the winter * a lot of people in Alaska get this or get depressed from a lack of sun light for long long periods of time. ) So, depression does have a better turn around. That's just a mental illnesses assuming she even has depression. * I have seen people on Lexapro as a booster with 2 or more medications to treat bipolar disorder * Bipolar disorder is a completely different demon in it's own. So many different chemical imbalances and fluxes, there's no controlling that, and well, lets not even get into anything involving Schizophrenia. There's no really learning how to control or do it in your head... believe me... I've tried... many times... over and over... to control mood disorders in my head without the aid of medications. Taking medications feeling well and thinking to myself "I've got this, I don't need these!" Only to discover in a week or so after stopping them I didn't have it, and I was back down in the same downward spiral I was in again. Sadly, it's nothing you can control. Everything is in my brain, believe me. I am a high functioning individual. I am certainly not unintelligent my any means. All it is, just a chemical imbalance, sadly. They don't understand everything about it completely, yet. Maybe people with very minor cases of depression... possibly? But I don't believe they would prescribe medication for those cases, they'd probably send them to therapy or something along those lines. Is that along the lines of what you are talking about?
The question you are asking is if people can eventually learn to control their illness? Sadly, a lot of the homeless you see around here... are mentally ill.
Not medicated, of course.