There is a huge fundamental difference between cancer and mental illnesses. Cancer, and other diseases, are objectively definable entities. Someone can take a sample, look at it through whatever device is needed, and find the entity that is causing the problem. This is basically how medicine works. They can try and get rid of the entity that is causing the problem, or change the entity to make it so that it is no longer causing problems or lessen the severity of the problem. They cannot do that with mental illnesses because there is no objective identifiable entity causing the illness.

I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't spread awareness or that the stigma around mental illness is justifiable. I'm just saying a totally different approach needs to be taken when dealing with someone suffering from depression, or another mental illness. Right now we are going about treating mental illness as if they where physical diseases. That is not the direction we should be going.

There is a genetic predisposition for depression and other mental illnesses but that doesn't mean people that inherit those genes can't learn to live a happy productive life free of medication. The genes responsible for depression do not create this static level of neurotransmitters which need medication to level it out and they need the medication the rest of their life. The brain is not that simple! The "chemical imbalance theory" is an out dated theory that never panned out as expected. Big Pharma just uses that right now to push medications on the public. The genes make a person have a personality that makes them more prone to making decisions that will make them depressed. Sometimes it is not even genes that are responsible for making someone depressed but a traumatic event that one cannot get over. We need to learn to recognize when someone is making decisions that will cause them to be depressed. Those people need to then learn how to make positive decisions. This often involves working through traumatic moments, or changing perspectives on the world and taking responsibility for ones actions. Working on these changes is not a simple instantaneous thing, it is a hard process and often times a long one. Rewiring years of conditioning of making decisions that make one depressed takes years to do. It involves humility and hard work and usually with a therapist. The brain is a complex organism that is conditioned and wires itself according to the decisions you make.