I'm glad that someone is challenging what the author calls the 'medical "physical" theory of depression/anxiety', although it's unfortunate that the only way to do this is to use another progressive narrative (alienation caused by capitalism).
To me, the biggest gap in the mainstream theory is that it claims that depression is qualitatively different from sadness, and yet I have never seen any scientific article that provides evidence of this. The usual argument that is given for this distinction is that, unlike merely being sad, depression produces extreme feelings of helplessness, pessimism and inability to act. And yet what if these were actually just extreme versions of things that already go along with what we call sadness? That is, what if mild sadness and mild depression were the same thing, and severe depression was categorically different from mild sadness only because it was more extreme?
To me, the biggest gap in the mainstream theory is that it claims that depression is qualitatively different from sadness, and yet I have never seen any scientific article that provides evidence of this. The usual argument that is given for this distinction is that, unlike merely being sad, depression produces extreme feelings of helplessness, pessimism and inability to act. And yet what if these were actually just extreme versions of things that already go along with what we call sadness? That is, what if mild sadness and mild depression were the same thing, and severe depression was categorically different from mild sadness only because it was more extreme?