Isn't the definition of depression basically feeling that way over anextended period despite not having a logical reason to do so?
Regardless, if you're depression is because your life sucks so much that it makes sense to be that way, and has so for years, something is still very wrong.
Not necessarily. You can split a definition in many different ways depending on what you're trying to explore, but one way of differentiating types of depression is exogenous vs endogenous. Exogenous depression is a reasonable reaction to bad circumstances - a close family member dying - whereas endogenous depression is internally generated and not related to any circumstances. There are many different ways of talking about "depression", many of them talking about different things - one of the difficulties with psychological terminology is that often that it's just descriptive of someone's behaviour rather than underlying causes, because it's such a complex area.
Yes and no? In such a situation their brain has high confidence in a bad world. If the world is actually bad, then that's not a malfunction, but among the strengths of the predictive hypothesis is that it allows the same explanation for the malfunctioning and normal cases.
>If the world is actually bad, then that's not a malfunction
In either case the treatment is the same. Doctors and psychiatrists are powerless to do anything to actually put their patients in safe and wholesome environments.
Absolutely true, and a huge issue in mental health treatment. That being said, I wonder if there's something to be said for medicine even in such situations. Maybe we should consider the basis for treatment to be 'is better able to function in current situation'. For instance, ADD is realistically just rounding out the wrong end of the focus bell curve, and depending on how much focus is needed in your day to day life you might be functional or nonfunctional with the same natural level.
