To add to the posts on here, a personal perspective.
I've had several periods of depression throughout my life and I'm all too familiar with the symptoms, and, debilitating effects.
The "stiff upper lip " has been mentioned, as has cultures, but, let me add one more.
The "stigma " attached, wrongly, to mental health problems.
Having the moral resolve to admit to yourself, and ask for, professional help, is a key element in being subsequently able to talk to a mental health professional. Once you admit, publicly, to having depression, and, as an aside, depression does not discriminate....anybody and everybody can suffer the condition, ...thereafter, it takes very little for the epithets "nutter " " headcase" etc to start emerging, sometimes directly, sometimes insidiously, but, emerge they do. Such comments only compound the effects of the condition for obvious reasons.
You also end up developing two personalities, a public one, trying not to show you are suffering, and, a private one which you try to keep hidden, but which is with you 24 /7 and it's the latter which can do the most damage if you feel you are alone. You also have to try and establish the causal factors, and here you do need to talk because they may well be not what you assume.
A brief, very brief, resume therefore. The first bout was in the RAF and it took a perceptive C/T and subsequently Med Wing Commander to help me. What I will say is, the RAF "management " started the problem which then developed. It was resolved, in part, thanks entirely to the diagnosis of the Doctor in about two weeks albeit by then the damage had been done.
The second was the culture at an airline....and it took a very, very capable mental health nurse to, unsparingly, "dissect " me to get to the root of the problem.
The third, I can't go into, but, again, it was culture related, and the RAF / CS showed the exact opposite of the promoted "support " purely to preserve an image. I wish I could go into details because it would do more than raise eyebrows.
The fourth was the passing of my partner and my subsequent almost following in her footsteps with locations and timings when it came to my kidney stones .
There was a lighter side with the first time. Arrived at Wegberg, on a Sunday, naturally, and reception asked how I'd got there..usual litany of the obvious methods...hence, "in a motor glider " wasn't expected....one of those "priceless expression" moments, as it was true. Got flown in in the clubs Motor Falke by the CFI...alas, it got worse, when the club decided to visit on the Mon / Tues and caused "some consternation" shall we say. Seemingly, the complaints to the Wing Commander were dismissed as his daughter flew with us and "I know exactly what they're like ! " was his response.
As for the current rise in suicides, I would venture to suggest marketing has played a part in that materialism and an "ideal lifestyle " are heavily promoted as signs of "success". Unfortunately, the "ideal lifestyle " is a figment of the marketing mind.