[asveikau]

I remember reading the DSM occasionally, which is what they use to diagnose these things. I'll caution that I am not an expert, have no training in the area, so have at best a layperson's understanding.

But my understanding is that you can have the symptoms of depression from time to time and not meet the criteria. Most of these things have, alongside the list of symptoms, a bullet point or two about it being persistent, that it gets in the way of your activities. Sometimes you see the list of symptoms for something like a mood disorder and you say, hey, that could be anybody, especially teenagers. Then you see the blurb about it being nearly every day for six weeks or whatever.

As a thinking person of somewhat atheist leanings it's personally occurred to me that life is pointless, kind of like you said. Sometimes, especially when thinking of mortality, that can bum me out. But I wouldn't say that's the same as clinical depression.