How would you "medically disprove" the notion that some people are unhappy because the circumstances of their lives are bad rather than biological defects?
If it helps, unhappiness/despair seem like different degrees of the same feeling. Depression is a different feeling.
The closest analogy I can think of is that "amused" and "satisfied" are both positive feelings, but they are different and you can't treat the cause the same even if some of the symptoms are similar.
“Exogenous depression” is supposed to be experienced by about a fifth of people at one point or another. What if many persistent cases of depression were actually exogenous? That might be more interesting than parsing the difference between despair, hopelessness, anhedonia, and depression.
I wonder how a week of low dose amphetamine usage, like adderall, might help disrupt no-motivation mood loops. A friend of mine (cycling through many antidepressants) seems like he would respond well to this. As in, he would feel better and be able to “shift gears.” Not to get more work done, but say, enjoy going to an art museum. And feel what it is like to be enthusiastic again.
OK. And the notion that psychiatry has been used to simply stamp anyone agitating for political change as insane is also attested (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protest_Psychosis for instance). So what's your objection to this line of inquiry?
I don't know what you're trying to argue here, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the claim at the root of the thread, and I apologize but I'm not interested in the tangent.
