I certainly wasn't intending to trivialize the suffering that some founders go through as a result of their experiences.

The point I was trying to make is what's touted as "mental illness" may be better looked at as a normal human response to the highly unusual, and extremely stressful circumstances these people have chosen to place themselves in.

That is to say: to the extent that we might subscribe to the concept of a "pain signal", and that depression and anxiety are among the various kinds of pain signals our body creates for us -- the "signal" in this case is not that they're "broken", or that something is systemically or constitutionally wrong with them. But rather, an indication of the fact that they've embarked on a course that perhaps they shouldn't have, and threatening to become (or perhaps already has become) unmanageable for them.