As someone who is clinically depressed, I have often wondered: philosophically speaking, is trying to treat depression wrong? People are depressed for a reason, possibly because life's pretty damned depressing once you get down to it. It seems to me that in plenty of cases, depression is a logical reaction to this planet, a rather depressing thought in and of itself. Despite the wars and the plagues and the genocides and the poverty and the seemingly countless other reasons for one to be depressed, people treat depression like a disease when it seems more like a perfectly acceptable reaction to the human condition. Treating depression like this appears to me as a rather unsubtle way of trying to trick people into believing everything is going to be okay when reality seems to contradict this. Any thoughts?

Thank you for your question. I think you're right to wonder whether treating depression is always justified. After all, sometimes being upset about something is an appropriate reaction. For instance, we wouldn't feel the need to "treat" someone's grief over the death of a loved one. On the other hand, while a certain amount of grief over such a situation seems justified and appropriate, one might also suggest that it is possible to take that grief too far. If I had a friend who was grieving intensely and for a very long time over the loss of a loved one, I might start to think of ways I might try to help. Similarly, while one can be entirely justified in being depressed over the state of the world, I am not sure that being clinically depressed is the *only* appropriate reaction to the world's state. This is for a number of reasons. First of all, there are a number of things to be absolutely thrilled about: a beautiful sunrise, the smell a pine forest, being able to fully trust another person,...