It is clear that you fly in the face of the psychiatric profession and deny the existence of depression as an illness. You may be one of the lucky ones who do not suffer from it, but it is very real, believe me. Your attitude is sadly typical of today's society and does nothing to help remove the unwarranted stigma of mental illnesses.
I did suspect I would ruffle some feathers with this. I spoke only from personal experience and the research I did to figure out why these people I knew acted the way they did. Your mileage may vary.
If I fly in the face of the psychiatric profession - you're dead right.
I do not deny the existence of depression or anxiety - we all suffer from it at some point in our lives. Whether depression is
illness depends on who you ask. Like virtually all "Mental Illnesses" there is no physiological test that you can take to determine if you have such an illness. Your psychiatrist will tell you about "chemical imbalances" (Has anyone taken a sample of the fluids of your brain and anlayzed these chemicals??) and the like and "research suggests..." but there is no physiological basis for calling anxiety or depression and illness. All mental illnesses are diagnosed by listening to what the patient tells the doctor. The diagnosis is based purely on that and on nothing physiological. Any "mentally healthy" person could walk into a psychiatric office and tell them certain things and be diagnosed as "mentally ill". Try that with pneumonia or athritis or a broken leg. (Please do a google search on the "Thud" experiment - you may find it interesting.)
Psychiatrists have one over-riding fear and that is that one of their patients (I prefer to say "client") loses it and kills themselves on their shift, so to speak. If in doubt, they will dose you up with anti-depressants almost as a matter of course. Then to keep getting the prescription, you will need to keep seeing them every couple of weeks or so (at $150-$200 each time) - of course they have some kind of interest in keeping you on these drugs. Maybe that is a cynical attitude, but I only got that way from knowing people who went through this. The people I knew had been on these drugs between 7 and 19 years. No attempt was ever made to gradually reduce the dosage or, heaven forbid, get them off it.
Of course depression and anxietyt exists and it has causes and remedies. Drugs like Prozac, Welbutrin and others alter your behavior and your perception of your own environment, they do not address the causes. They will not "cure" your "illness".
Perhaps living in Southern California has skewed my views a little but everyone and their dogs and kids seem to be on anti-depressants here.