Thanks for pointing this out. It can be society as a whole, or simply the situation we end up in, individually. Or even both, in which case it would rather be surprising and in a way symtomtic of mental illness to NOT suffer from depression.
One thing interesting about society and its effect on individuals mental state, is it the absolute rating of a society's sanity (however we could rate that) or rather the delta between present and past, along with the perceived prospect of its future delta? You are perhaps touching on this as you are writing going "down" the hill. We might still be at the top of the Mountain, but that's hardly relevant.
Everyone's detectors of this delta seem to have different thresholds of sensitivity... Simply put, some frogs feel small increments of water's temperature and try to warn others, so that they work out the means of escape instead of keeping their pool party going, but for those partying the increments pass as not alarming.
That of course does not mean that less sensitive ones don't feel some uneasiness in the environment. They do, but the cook keeps dressing the heating broth with promises of better future, and lulls the frogs into attributing this uneasiness to depression. Because you see, psychiatry is just another cook's tool among forks, spoons and knives.
Erich Fromm did not use the term 'punitive psychiatry' for no reason.
