[xsmasher]

There's depression the feeling, which may be caused by un-live-with-able circumstances and serve as a stimulus to make life changes.

Then there is depression the illness, which and may or may not be brought on by some circumstances, but which is debilitating.

If it's serious enough, I'm not sure if it matters whether it is spontaneous or caused - you need to be brought out of it before you can deal with the un-live-with-able circumstances. Staying in the depression doesn't help you to take action at all.

[p4wnc6]

But the huge difference is that with truly un-live-with-able circumstance, the most important thing you need is help to alleviate the circumstance itself. Changing your response to it isn't helpful if it doesn't contribute to changing the underlying circumstance, and when the circumstances are things that you don't control which happen to you, especially when they are on-going and it's not so much about how you process them but actually stopping them, it's questionable what role medication really plays.

> Staying in the depression doesn't help you to take action at all.

It definitely can. Precisely when you lack the power to change your own extrinsic circumstances, and it is those circumstances causing the harm that leads to depression, then staying in the depression keeps sending out that distress signal for help. Taking you out of the depression without also addressing the circumstances makes it seem like you're managing it, when really you're still being harmed.