Unhappy is dramatically, completely different to depression. I've been both and they don't even feel that similar.

If we change the word "unhappy" to "despairing" does it make sense?

I don't know - it's your argument.

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.

No

Thanks for your contribution to the discussion.

Sadness or distress vs not feeling anything and not having motivation?

Yes, this is roughly in the right area.

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.

Nobody needs to disprove the notion that some people are happy for reasons having nothing to do with clinical depression.

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.