Article re: treatment of depression

[pegkerr]

Happiness: Enough Already
The push for ever-greater well-being is facing a backlash, fueled by research on the value of sadness.

I am trying to figure out why this article upsets me so much. I guess because several members of my family (including me) are on medication for mood disorders. I read this as insinuating that perhaps we are just a little too eager to forego a truly authentic life in exchange for a surcease of the pain of depression. Well, actually, the article is talking about the pain of sadness, which it seems to conflate with depression.

Am I over-reacting? Your reactions?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

I took so long writing my comment, that many others commented ahead... now that I've gone back to read those comments, I'm sincerely shocked. I didn't see the article as a slam against ANYONE with clinical depression at all. Not even a little bit. I saw it straightforward, as an article saying that as a society we've lost the distinction between depression and sadness, particularly when it comes to psychiatry. Being depressed doesn't mean you're just sad and need to cheer up. Likewise, being sad doesn't mean your brain chemistry needs to be 'fixed'. I feel almost at a lost reading the others' comments, because I didn't pick up on those interpretations at all while reading it. I felt like it just briefly gave a few artistic anecdotes, but that wasn't the drive of the article. I didn't feel like the article was conflates depression and sadness, but does just the opposite.