I'd like to distinguish two completely different points here. The first is that some people with an undiagnosed illness are told that their symptoms are being caused by depression, and their doctors give them anti-depressants instead of trying to figure out what's wrong with them. You were in that situation, and your response makes a lot of sense to me. I hope that in your situation, I would have done the same thing.

The second point, the one I've quoted above, that feelings of sadness etc. are a normal, healthy response to a very sad situation, is different. GrannyJo4 is diagnosed. She is being treated for depression in addition to receiving medical treatment for her MS and MG, and not instead of it. I want to think about your point in this situation, too, as well as in the first.

I once talked to someone whose husband had left her, and she'd been thrown into a state of despair. She was taking anti-depressants to help her function at all. I suggested (this sounds really tactless, but she took it well and I learned something) that her emotions were normal and not pathological, and thus shouldn't be treated. She said, "Well, if your hand got cut off you'd be in terrible pain. Pain is there for a reason. It's a healthy response of your body to a trauma. But you'd still take pain medicine."

Depression is not the same as grief, sadness, anger or anxiety. Depression is when some central part of your personality, what makes you you, isn't able to function properly. Depression can be triggered by things happening in your body (like chemical imbalances) or by things happening in your emotions (like being discouraged about the way your illness is affecting your life). But in either case, the depression is something distinct from its trigger, and it is good to explore ways to address the depression itself as well as (not instead of!) its underlying cause.

So: does it make sense to take anti-depressants when the cause of the depression is healthy, appropriate, normal emotional reactions to something tragic? Maybe not, as you say, if the point is only to suppress these emotions. The emotions themselves aren't the problem. But if the point is to suppress the depression that is a secondary effect of these emotions--then yes, if it works, it makes a lot of sense.

I hope this is coherent. I'm sort of thinking out loud here--I'm always trying to figure this one out myself.

Abby