Well said, Venus.

I'd like to add another concept: we all have a pleasure-seeking, goal-oriented system and a separate pain-avoidance system in the brain. They need to have a balance in order for us to function at our best. In my subjective experience, medications seem to reduce activity in the pain-avoidance parts of the brain - with all kinds of unwanted side effects. They often do little, if anything, to trigger activity in the pleasure-seeking, goal oriented system in my case and, I suspect, in many other people's experience as well. The problem for me is that this positive system keeps shutting down under stress. Why? Because I have chronic, subconscious negative expectations which cause me to simply not signal it to turn on under certain stressful conditions!

I have had several recent experiences where I have felt myself getting rather gloomy and fatalistic, and I have asked myself, "what would make you feel great right now?" Inevitably, I realize there is some cherished goal that I feel insecure about getting, due to a disempowered self-image (classic, common issues with self-esteem and self-confidence are at work here). Immediately, I find my mood lifting and my mind beginning - slowly - to consider ways I can solve whatever problem I am facing.

Because I have been engaged in negative patterns of thinking for a very long time (for whatever original reasons), I keep slipping back into a defeatist pattern of thinking as soon as there is stress in my life that reminds me of a previous stressor. What happens if I don't catch it? You guessed it - I start to dwell on what I'm afraid of instead of what I want to achieve, and boom! my mood bottoms out, and my motivation evaporates. I fail to achieve what I really want to, and then I react with a depressive or anxious episode as an understandable reaction to a feeling of having failed and being frustrated yet again!

Is this a purely biological problem unaffected by my own thinking, like diabetes? I really don't think so!!! A biological tendency for depressive states is being triggered by negative habits of thought - this is very clear to me now. In my personal experience (and everyone is different), medications are nowhere near a substitute for reframing my thinking and expectations.

I agree that depression is NOT a simple illness like influenza, which can be alleviated by getting a vaccine or taking a pill. It is a complex issue, caused by a wide possible range of variables. That's why there are so many theories and treatment options. In my opinion, it is most commonly a mood reaction to other, underlying biological and/or psychological issues, which then makes these other factors greatly intensified.