I agree with BethRags. For me, medication has never been, as some people see it, an "easy way out." In contrast, accepting that I need meds has been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. My goal with meds, as Beth said, is not to medicate anything away, but just to enable myself to live my life as normally as possible and to stop pathological mood states from developing. I agree that if a depression is situational, and has a clear cause that you can do something about, then you should. In that case, I probably wouldn't even classify it as a major depressive episode that warrants medication in the first place.