I am sorry awful things have happened to you in life, but fortunately, as your example shows, negative external stimuli are not a 1:1 correlation with depression. Unfortunately, positive circumstances are also not a 1:1 correlation with the lack of depression. While stress, trauma, tragedy, loss, adversity may all push some people into depression, there are plenty more who, for no discernible external cause, find themselves in irrational states of despair or other forms of depression, and it is no more solvable through self-motivated resilience than the hallucinations of a more tangible mental illness like schizophrenia could be solved through resilience. Perhaps a useful way of thinking about it if you don't quite understand depression ( though maybe not neurologically accurate ) is to also think of depression as a form of involuntary hallucination. Only instead of an auditory or visual hallucination, the brain is producing an emotional hallucination.
As for the downvotes, it's probably because the tone of your comment, perhaps unintentionally, comes off as skeptical & dismissive of the miserable reality that many people experience first hand.
Finally, & unrelated, it looks like you do some very fascinating work!
Thanks for the positive comments on my work. Yes I have been very lucky to have had the chance to work in some really interesting areas.
Please don't judge people based on the severity of their situation as to whether they are suffering or not. It doesn't help. It misleds bystanders reading your comment into a pit instead of seeking help.
As for the comparison to the world getting better, it's not linear and same for everyone. While on average, people are living better life than they did before. Life for people in some countries have gotten worse, not better. Maybe life for people which this forum self selects have gotten worse in the last few years.
I am not sure it is helpful for most people to focus on the negatives in their lives rather than the positive. I have yet to see anyone’s life improved by brooding on what is wrong rather than what is right.
I wasn’t actually judging anyone’s situation, just questioning how we have got to the situation where 2/3rd of the people answering the poll claim to be clinically depressed. If this is correct something is seriously wrong with HC.
Well, they might not be claiming clinical depression, which technically would require a clinician to render a diagnosis. Though many people may also not understand that distinction.
As for the large number, it may simply be that people who see the title of the post & aren't depressed just say to themselves in a slit second "nope not relevant to me, not clicking on it". In that case, most of the people who answered "yes" to depression were self-selecting as people for whom it was already relevant, i.e., people experiencing what they consider depression.
It's a problem with surveys in general. I hate doing surveys, but a huge portion of my job is data analysis, and most people are bad at creating surveys especially the design of individual questions. But the initial problem is "How do I get a representative sample when people that choose to do the survey may not be the same as people that won't". There's ways to minimize that effect, none of them great-- look at the the presidential polls as an example.
And yes, it is not helpful to look negatively. I think people with depression understand this too. They can't help it. If they had more control over their thoughts and life, it wouldn't be a disease or require medical treatment.
As per the link I posted in the comment, pessimism has been rising in developed and rich countries. So I wouldn't be surprised to find more pessimistic people on tech forums today. Tech filters out middle class people likely in developed countries or parts of the world. HN is dominated by Americans who have had a rough year. Protests, political unrest, they are currently leading in covid cases worldwide, etc. Other comments explain different reasons, I agree with them too so I won't repeat.
One thing I noticed is the rate of not depressed at all votes. It gradually increased towards late night in US.
It is interesting that the response to my post has been to vote it down to oblivion. I posted hoping to see if the 2/3rd clinical depressed number is just a self selecting aberration, or HN really has become this bad.