I do believe so Creamsickle. Without realizing or deciding, a depressed person will stop deciding what they think and feel. This makes them vulnerable to ruminating thoughts that feed on themselves. Thinking and feeling responses become hypersensitive and long lasting because of that.

For example, for a healthy person, if something irritating happens, they are irritated for a while and then they go on to something else. For a depressed person, the irritation feeds on itself. You don't think about it once and feel irritated, you think about it 100 times over and over and over again. Over time, this makes you hypersensitive to the various things that can make you angry. Tiny things will then set you off for a long lasting out of proportion emotional response.

That's why, I believe, being irritated or angry or afraid all the time is a sign of depression. I believe that the stereotypical angry teenager or grumpy old man are most likely depressed.

I believe that all this is caused by that one underlying mechanism explained in the notes.

- vital