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That's textbook major depressive disorder. How long would you let Jenna suffer out of principle? One month was too short a time for you, so what a year, two? She's not attending classes, crying all the time, sleeping more than usual. Why would you let depression ruin her future when we have effective treatment with a favorable side effect profile (CBT + SSRIs)? It's not an either/or situation. Doctors definitely counsel to increase exercise and get outside when starting treatment for depression. I don't think your strategy is very compassionate at all.

I think there is an argument to be made here that prescribing medication might be treating the symptoms but not the root causes, which will lead the patient to ignore the root causes, leading to worse outcomes in the long run while an improvement can be observed in the short term.

Symptoms of depression are bad news for difficult self-improvement projects. Sometimes you need your emotional system to stop punching you in the face before you can climb out of the hole. Negative emotions can easily slip from encouraging action into preventing it. And without the capability to feel pleasure, even success will seem pretty empty.

Sometimes your life is actually great and the failure is in your perception. See the unreasonable effectiveness of applying basic rationality to your thinking, i.e. CBT.

Relief from depression is not happiness, it’s neutrality, the space to work, and the ability to feel the fruits of your work.

However the neutrality of the self depends on a fertile environment within which to grow a new life structure. As someone described in a different post about 'shit life syndrome': there are places physically, and I would argue as an extension also socially, where the true problem and root cause is outside.

Care should also be taken to have a society that builds for the success of all, and helps to place individuals within good situations. The help from a drug to fix a temporary problem or a genetic disease might still be required but it isn't a one shot magic bullet.

> Also, what is the appropriate threshold where we call it mental illness. The article, Jenna's boyfriend cheated. She's seriously depressed. That ain't illness, it's normal. That doctor is a quack.

You'd be surprised how many drug and gambling abuse spirals start with people being left by their s/o's. Back when I worked in bars, everyone with a serious drinking and/or gambling issue either had a relationship falling apart or already way beyond repair.

The difference between previous times and now is that people are actually taking care about their wellbeing (partially due to feminism actively taking down the toxic masculinity "ideal" of men that don't even go to doctors when they've broken a bone, much less for mental health), and that common "self therapy" strategies ranging from alcoholism over hard drug abuse to domestic violence are not as accepted in culture as they have been before.

I somewhat agree that depression could be a good thing under certain circumstances, circumstances that can be fixed and are not outside the control of the subject.

Also I feel that I need to add that there are different personalities, and disorders of personality. In a lot of cases the narcissistic usually comes on top exploiting and causing depression and insecurities in others. I don’t find that this type of depression is useful. And generally society is becoming more narcissistic which rises the level of distress in others and that can’t be easily fixed.

> "We're destined to suffer, if for no other reason the horrific reality that we will all be annihilated one day. Everything beautiful in the world will be taken from us. Our existence will end. So happiness is not our default state, or even where we SHOULD get to. Why would it be?"

Why should those things make you suffer? Desire causes suffering, if you don't desire to live forever, then not living forever doesn't cause suffering. Reactions to events cause suffering, if you don't see yourself as the center of the world, if you don't see the world as a separate and spiteful active agency, then you don't see things being "taken from you". If you don't value only the beautiful things, then you don't suffer from your imbalanced views.

Why WOULDN'T happiness be your default state? There's nothing you can do which carries you beyond the grave, there's nothing you can build which changes anything, you can't remove bad things from the world, you can't change other people, there's no obligation to do anything, and no reason to be sad about unchangable facts.

It's the learned state that you are in a competition to maximise property and money, that fame matters, that being thin or rich or pretty defines your worth, that you are important and deserve everlasting healthy youthful life, that the world isn't good enough, that are not the default state and bring suffering.

> "That ain't illness, it's normal"

When everyone has cancer, cancer will stop being an illness?

> "but we conflate those people with others who are just very rightfully sad about the circumstances in their lives. Often these people (alcohol, food, drugs, phone) instead of making the difficult changes."

And? What's wrong with helping people who aren't ill? What's wrong with helping people make difficult changes? What's wrong with supporting people who will benefit from support, helping everyone climb as high as they can with teamwork, instead of behaving like insurance companies and looking for every loophole to get out of doing that?

[Edit: downvoter, you didn't even have time to read this between me clicking submit, then edit, before downvoting :rolleyes:]