I think depression has a multitude of "causes" and still isn't very well understood yet. It's not the day-to-day, specific, momentary sadnesses/changes in mood we feel. I believe the problem with treating depression is that there are so many causes and we don't know how to figure out specific/idiopathic causes so are pretending they don't exist and confusing heck out of the situation.

Depression can be "caused" by bad diet or heart problems; they're not the same. The last instance cited about depression following heart attacks is a heart-related depression, not something any of us (unless we have heart problems) have to worry about. Depression can be primary or secondary, uni or bipolar, episodic or chronic, etc. Anti-depressants aren't for everyone or for every depression.

My mother died of a brain tumor in 1954. They finally operated in 1952 to find out what was going on and closed her back up as there was nothing, at that time, that they could do. She had been having grand mal seizures since 1948 and at that time, they decided it was all in her head. . . and sent her to a psychiatrist for treatment. I can't tell you how many years I "wondered" why my father didn't "like" psychiatrists until I learned that little fact :-)

I don't think we're a whole lot past that situation yet. We send people with life problems to psychiatrists who decide they're depressed and they get meds that don't do anything or have horrific side effects (possibilities unknown until an individual gets them and it further negatively affects their life, sometimes permanently).

I had a job with a boss who wouldn't change and my therapist said I could either quit/change jobs or get depressed. Life problems are like that but meds aren't going to change the situation if I refuse to quit/change jobs and get depressed. And, once I get depressed, there is a good chance that I'll "stay" depressed/get even further depressed until I change any life problem, make it "right" for myself in some way. Meds can't help that any more than self-medication/street drugs/alcohol can. If I'm lacking B vitamins, am a strict and somewhat clueless vegetarian and get depressed, meds aren't going to help that either! I just wish doctors and pharmaceutical companies were a bit more honest, that the doctors truly worked to make sure the pharmaceutical companies didn't get out of control like they are. The pharmaceuticals can only get prescribed by the doctors, they can't prescribe themselves and I think the doctors are shooting themselves in the foot prescribing harmful stuff that probably won't work to keep a "public"/patient who can get seriously ill from taking wrong meds and cause them a real problem! I "laugh" at the public service ads about how antibiotics don't help a cold; what part of that did doctors not understand all along and what's with "giving in" to the patient because they "demand" certain meds they've seen on TV? The whole advertising of meds on TV, any meds, pisses me off. And I blame the doctors (not the Feds) for "allowing" it to get to this, for not "protecting" me from the money grubbers at any cost. "First, do no harm" shouldn't be such a novel concept.