Hi Science... First I can only speak for myself but I don't think there is such a thing as "too many threads" especially if they are thoughtful or posted by someone in need of support.

I think that even if one believes that the world is full of pain and misery, that our inteligence makes it possible for us to decide how to react to that. i.e. being intelligent doesn't mean seeing the world as painful and therefore deciding that we should be in pain. Instead I think it allows us to find those moments of beauty and enjoy them, better yet to create our own moments of beauty, best of all to commit to creating beauty for others to improve the world for all.

My favorite quote is from the movie Contact: "I've always believed the world is what we make of it."

I believe depression comes not from intelligence but from something else, a personal situation for some and something not functioning right in the brain for others or maybe all. I can't speak to what is going on for someone else but I can see the malfunction in my head, I can see that I isolate myself, make myself unavailable, and then get mad when people don't speak to me. It is like my brain is my evil nemesis and is creating situations setting me up to fail so that it can give an evil laugh at my failure. I can see that process yet it does not help the pain that it causes.

I believe myself to be an intelligent person and I think my intelligence plays in by justifying my depression by pulling in parts of my life that are logically true that are negative, like the fact that I am alone, thereby giving credence to the lies that the depression generates.

I absolutely agree. This is, IMO, not a sign of intellect but rather a sign of depression hijacking intellect and coloring it with a box of black crayons. That is what depression does with its black crayons and darkly muted inks, and I think maybe if one is of high intellect it is worse, because it just gives depression a larger canvas on which to paint.