1986 - I feel sad. Well that's life.
2016 - I feel sad. It must be that I'm depressed, let me read more about depression so I'll know even how I fail in life, because everyone around me on social media is so much successful and happy.
2016 - I feel sad. It must be that I'm depressed, let me read more about depression so I'll know even how I fail in life, because everyone around me on social media is so much successful and happy.
1986 - I feel sad. Well that's life. Kills self six weeks later
In other words, it's not that people today are getting treatment for things that people in the past just knew how to live with; people today are getting treatment for things that people in the past died from. People drank themselves to death, or ODed on drugs, or put a rope around their neck, all because they couldn't calm the storm raging inside their head.
Feeling sad is part of life. Dealing with it requires practice. I think people did it a lot better before our age of needing to be happy all the time or worry something was wrong with us.
But, as someone who was actually depressed and that due to things that in retrospect don't really matter, I do think that if I had been more resilient I would have had an easier time.