> Seems more like a failing of our society to recognize the importance of relationships. I'd argue this is especially true in the US where we obsess over careers and monetary wealth much more than we emphasize the importance of friendships, family, and romance.

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> It's all down to personal responsibility. You have to find the drive inside to constantly push. To forget the victim mentality that society encourages. To fix one problem at a time. To fight the hellish mode that your mind has enabled.

This is what doesn't work. This approach is wrong - we already know you can't rely on peoples' willpower in normal tasks, what makes people think it will work with issues that by definition kill whatever willpower reserves you have? Talking about personal responsibility didn't cure obeseity, didn't cure alcoholism, didn't cure drug abuse - so it sure as hell isn't going to cure depression.

Now I'm not saying this is equal to putting all hope in drugs. Maybe there are other "social" approaches, but it won't help to tell people that depression is their choice.

Honestly that is lot of BS. I get what your saying to a point, but I have never used my depression as an excuse to dismiss any of my normal duties, and I think it's pretty bad that you would assume many would.

By all accounts I have a great life, I have friends that have been with me for over 20 years, have a wife who by all my accounts is the greatest person in the world, have an amazing job that I completely love going to every day. I'm truly blessed with what I have, and could never argue otherwise.

I am a diagnosed manic depressive and I treat it like alcoholism. You're not going to see an alcoholic stand up in an AA meeting 20 years later and say "I'm not an alcoholic anymore". I treat depression the same way, you have to confront it head on each day and admit what is happening to you mentally. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, whenever. The great irony of that is that alcoholism is recognized as a disease where this article is arguing that depression isn't the same.

You can have the best life, the best people in it and still want to top yourself. To "fight the hellish mode" is such a radical oversimplification it's comical. I seriously have some of the best and most longstanding relationships with my friends that makes it most people jealous. Most people don't understand how a group of people could still be with each other after 20+ years. Yet I'm still depressed every day. It's never going away, it will always be there no matter what I do. To characterize that as victimization or lack of effort is exactly what leads people to kill themselves, because whats the point after honestly? You are literally saying their inability to foster positive relationships is what is the problem. Having nothing but positive relationships in my life I can tell you that's bullshit.

It's not interaction that fosters the problem, it's fucking depression, the disease. Get off you high horse or were going to have more Aaron Swartz's on our hands. The stigma is a 100% real, and garbage like this just makes people with depression feel more alienated.

I get how authoritarian pill pushers turn people into libertarian bootstrap people, but just because your depression isn't chemical doesn't mean it's your fault, or that there's anything that you can ultimately do about it by yourself. My problem with the pills is that they don't work, because they're targeted at a made-up disease. That the disease that current practice has lumped people into is made up doesn't mean that people are not suffering, they are, and doesn't mean that they don't need help; we do.

Talking to people, making sure that they're healthy, connected, secure, and that they feel like they can express themselves is more expensive than drugging them and/or warehousing them, so I don't think that avoiding the depression diagnosis should reduce public spending or concern with the same sufferers, but raise it. I also assume that when the people who are now lumped together in depression diagnoses are dealt with with more precise approaches, there will always be places among those approaches where drugging and warehousing will be the best option.

Treating sadness with drugs is like how we try to cure poverty with teachers.