I kept saying this for years on HN but until the 2022 study it was always voted down and told that NO, it is due to a chemical imbalance and that we don’t understand
The thing that's dangerous about this line of thinking is that most depressed people feel like they have insight and are reacting to reality as it really is. But if the depression lifts, they usually no longer feel that way.
So trying to figure out whether depression is reasonable is usually a trap, and will not improve the person's life. The thing to do is to manage the feelings, treat the depression, and revisit those topics once the depression lifts.
I suspect those downvotes are due to people recognizing that it implies depression is sometimes within the control of someone afflicted by it and conflating that with blaming the person afflicted by it. People seem offended by critiques of modern ideas that rationalize away an individual's control, agency, and especially culpability for their behavior or outcomes. Sometimes these rationalizations are fair, other times not.
I think that it's simpler: people have long been encouraged to believe that certain medical procedures and practices that lack great evidence are responsible for saving their lives, and that anyone who critiques those procedures in any way is trying to kill them. People who are paid (as often as not by government) to provide those procedures and practices encourage these beliefs, and spend massive amounts of money in lobbying through patients' rights groups and other channels to support and encourage people in that fear and anger.
People who are sick either continue to be sick, get well, or die. No matter what diagnosis or treatment you give to someone, they either get better, don't get better, or are removed from the conversation. We never hear from the dead again, the people who get better insist that you saved their lives, and the people who don't get better will be attacked by the people who did for not believing or trusting you enough.
That study does not support your intuitions on this matter, but merely excludes seratonin as the basis for a chemical imbalance causing depression. It does not show that there exists no material cause for depression, only that there is strong reason to believe it is not related to seratonin.
First of all, that study is about challenging a specific chemical imbalance, which was not that well supported anyway.
But I think mental illnesses challenge our very old notions of free will, willpower and control. How much are you really in control when the mental structure for motivation in the brain is broken? Personally, it's not like I pulled myself out of depression. I just took advantage of a "break" my brain gave me.
There is the chemical imbalance and then there is the diagnosis. Complete guess, but wouldn’t be surprised if the rate of people with the imbalance has climbed less dramatically over the last several years than the rate of people being positively diagnosed.
This is a misreading of the study which was about seratonin. It does not conclude that therefore there is no material condition underlying depression and that it's environmental and somehow the result of circumstance.
So trying to figure out whether depression is reasonable is usually a trap, and will not improve the person's life. The thing to do is to manage the feelings, treat the depression, and revisit those topics once the depression lifts.