Which form of reporting would you use here and why?

Which form of reporting would you use here and why?

On the phone.

Tim: How are you?
Jake: I'm really depressed.

----

Later:

Tim (to a friend): Jake called this morning. He's really depressed/He says he's really depressed.

You could use either, really. If you went with "he's really depressed" you would be taking his words at face value and reporting their content as a fact. If you went with "he says he's really depressed" you are reporting his verbalization of his situation without rendering it an incontrovertible fact. Neither is correct or incorrect per se. Using the first would simply mean that you take his word for it; using the second might be construed as you either don't necessarily believe him or you are making no value judgment at all -- or that you want to stress that it's not your conjecture, but comes straight form the horse's mouth, so to speak. In these last three cases, tone and context would help your listener decide where you were going with that.