Regularly quoted at people who are struggling. The second line is about what someone else says, not about what the burdened person should manage to feel.
Quick answer
Worry weighs a person down. The relief the verse names does not come from inside the sufferer; it comes from someone speaking a good word to them.
Read both lines
The Hebrew of the first line is a picture rather than a diagnosis. The verb means to bow down or press low, so the image is of a weight bending someone over, and the NKJV's "depression" is rendering that picture rather than naming a clinical condition. What the verse observes is ordinary and true: carrying worry is physically heavy, and it shows. The second line is where the whole verse turns, and the grammar matters. The good word is not something the anxious person produces. It arrives from outside, spoken by someone else, and it is the only remedy the verse offers. Read plainly, this is a proverb about what a friend can do.
What it does not mean
This verse is not an instruction to a burdened person to cheer up, and it is not a rebuke for feeling the weight. It does not say anxiety is a failure of faith, and it names no fault in the person bowed down; it simply reports that the weight is real. Nor is it a claim that a kind sentence resolves a serious condition. Depression and anxiety can be medical matters that need real care, and nothing in an ancient proverb about a good word overrules that. What the verse does establish is the direction of help, and it points outward: somebody says something good to somebody who is carrying too much.
From this side of the cross
The verse assigns the remedy to whoever is nearby, which makes it less a comfort to receive than a job to take. Isaiah describes the Servant as given "the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary" (50:4), and that is the model. Paul says to bear one another's burdens, and to weep with those who weep, which is the same instinct without any requirement that the weeping stop first. If you are the one bowed down, the verse is not asking anything of you. If you are nearby, it is.
Related: Isaiah 50:4 · Galatians 6:2 · Romans 12:15 · Proverbs 15:23
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.