[noname123]

Simple. Human nature is about survival and reproduction. Resources are limited so that only some of us will survive and reproduce. Scarcity produces unhappiness which in term induces human productivity/creativity.

Case in point, Love in the Time of Cholera. You want to get the girl but you are a victim of socioeconomic scarcity. You become a life-long melancholic but are motivated to climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place. All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex.

[eavc]

>Scarcity produces unhappiness

Beyond a basic level, this fails to be true.

>which in term induces human productivity/creativity.

Show me that depression leads to greater productivity. I expect that you cannot.

>climb the social/professional ladder to get what it is that you couldn't get in the first place.

This has nothing to do with depression and little to do with happiness.

>All great literature, music, scientific discoveries were of products of unrequited love, jealousy, or the urge to overcome a self-inferiority complex.

This is trite, wildly hyperbolic, and almost certainly baseless.

[mannicken]

Not necessarily. Depression paralyzes you, leaves you too scared to leave the house or do anything.

"Stars" are more likely to be hypomanic. Or just people who like writing or composing music too much :) People like to blame success on mental disease or drugs because it helps them justify their laziness. Also, attempt to claim that Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Kobain wrote their music because they had a self-inferiority complex might be caused by the self-inferiority complex and envy :P

[zackattack]

Or check this study out. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12167510