Do all people go through a depressed stage?!
Question:
Do all people go through a depressed stage?
If they do, is depression really an "illness"?
Answers:
My thesis is on the social construction of depression as an "illness." All of my research points to no, depression is absolutely not an illness. It does not meet the criteria of the definition of illness. And the best "proof" may be that antidepressant medication tends to be very ineffective without therapy, whereas therapy is very effective without medication. (Imagine telling someone with diabetes or cancer that they need therapy in order for their treatment to work!)
Do all people go through a depressed stage? I would have to say yes. But I'd differentiate between the lay definition of depression and the clinical definition. Most people don't experience clinical depression, but the only difference between the two would be length of time it lasts and the impact is has on your life. Think of depression as a continuum rather than a scale... most people get depressed when a loved one dies, but would you diagnose them with clinical depression? Probably only if they were still in the same emotional state 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 10 years down the road.
In my research I read a really interesting article on Spiritual Melancholia as an alternative explanation to depression. Basically the author argues that we are a society that is fixated on youth and a fear of death, and that we have an expectation of "normal" that does not actually exist (hence cannot ever be met). These contribute to feelings of "depression" that he reinterprets as melancholia.
Hope this helps a bit. It's a rather broad topic...