for the vast majority of people, depression goes away from simply not being poor and having a stable income.
the meaning stuff is for a privileged demographic who have no actual reason to be depressed.
Discussion
Being stressed or having a rough time of it isn’t the same as being depressed. You can be sad about circumstances of events without being depressed.
being poor, having a never-ending rough time & chronic stress, will cause depression (along w all kinds of other problems) and make sure depression & illness stays. creativity & meaning is a luxury beyond basic needs.
a privileged demographic can relatively easily see & find their way out of any rough patch. their depression is silly (unless it’s from trauma or something like that).
The external world does not control your mindset. Thats a suggestion that we are automatons and that someone who is poor has literally no agency on how they even perceive it. There are countless examples that prove this isn’t the case.
Sure stats of depressed people probably tend toward those under lots of stress and bad circumstances, but that doesn’t mean people have no capacity to control their thoughts.
you exist in the real world where rent is due and bills need to be paid. when you continually can barely or not sufficiently pay for these things, you will be depressed.
they are too ill from chronic stress to simply will themselves out of a depressed state of mind. they have control over their thoughts but they know they’re poor. they’re worried about affording rent or what if their kid needs to go to the doctor? how do they oay fir it. what if their car breaks, how will they afford to fix it? can they afford to pay the water bill? etc. etc. legitimate worries. chronic stress. depression.
we’re not just brains in vats.
I still think you are equating two things that are not the same, imo. Being depressed is being helpless and believing nothing will go right and there’s no reason to do anything at all.
Simply being overwhelmed with thinking about what you need to do to get through the day is not depression.
Related: optimism is explicitly not situation dependent, like by definition it isn’t, because all problems are only relative. It’s very much like value. An example might be aboriginal tribes who are deeply poor and don’t even understand the type of wealth available in the world, but does this make them all horribly depressed?
with real depression caused by poverty, you’re not “simply overwhelmed.”
yes, they are depressed because they ~are~ helpless from being poor. they have chronically, for a long time, not been able to get out of being poor. so they are depressed, chronically stressed.
not being poor will fix it for the vast majority of depressed people.
yes, an aboriginal ~would~ ~definitely~ be considered poor against even a poor american. but they’re not worried about paying rent! they also don’t have a data plan for their cell phone bill to worry about! 🤣
but you would be right, concerning a non-poor demographic, depression is largely easily fixable.