Not parent, but I think I can help clarify. As goofy as it can sound: "being depressed" or in a "depressive state" can have many causes and some of them are obvious, but those states are not the disease of depression, exactly. They are serious, of course, and can be life threatening in their own right. But the distinction here is that depression can act like any other disease or illness - like, would making more friends improve tuberculosis? Too often we treat depression as a puzzle that can be solved. But it can just be something a person "has" and is stuck with, and needs medical treatment for.

That's not what the person I replied to said. They said

>However, depression is a disease independent of external factors.

Which sounds like "all depression is a disease independent of external factors". Further supporting this interpretation is that they "completely disagree" with the person they were replying to, as if their comment stood in contradiction.

If we are weakening the parent to just say "There exist cases of depression not caused by external problems" then they don't really contradict what they are replying to. The person they were replying to said "When you are depressed, see if there's a serious problem in your life" because they acknowledged that potential causes of and contributors to depression were numerous and heterogeneous.

When I'm debugging a program, the bug can come from lots of places. When I see a bug, I should definitely see if I'm failing to validate input. If someone told me "I completely disagree. Bugs are caused by hardware failures" I would tell them "if you are saying that all bugs are caused by hardware failures, you are simply wrong. If you're saying that some bugs are caused by hardware failures, then that in no way contradicts the wisdom of seeing whether I'm not validating my inputs".

I think this is mostly about what the formal and informal definitions of being depressed are. Informally people describe depressive states, and feelings of sadness, loss of hope, desperation, and so on as "being depressed". Those feelings are awful, but if they are coherent with real circumstances like grief, or a job you hate, then those feelings are somewhat appropriate and changing circumstances should help. Depression, the disease, is not coherent with reality or circumstances. It unfortunate that the same word it's used for these related but different states.

>Depression, the disease, is not coherent with reality or circumstances.

Where are people getting this idea? I mean, I suppose I could accept it as a definitional exercise in the same way that I can accept the idea that "gurple" is a bluish tint of red. But if you look at, say, a recent DSM, it doesn't say that external circumstances preclude a diagnosis of depression.

I have in my life been very closely connected to several people with depression and maybe that experience is influencing my opinion too much, I will check out some resources and diagnostic criteria, as it has been a while!