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People feel ashamed of being depressed, they feel they should snap out of it, they feel weak and inadequate. Of course, these feelings are symptoms of the disease. Depression is a grave and life-threatening illness, much more common than we recognize. As far as the depressive being weak or inadequate, let me drop some names of famous depressives: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sigmund Freud. Terry Bradshaw, Drew Carey, Billy Joel, T. Boone Pickens, J. K. Rowling, Brooke Shields, Mike Wallace. Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Mark Twain.
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Richard O'Connor (Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You)