“I think instant gratification has a lot to do with this as well. People want to be happy all the time in a similar way that they want what they want NOW! Sometimes, happiness is more of a thread throughout our lives than a permanent state of being. I would rather be happy long term while going through the various struggles of life than not to live at all but be at the extreme end of “happy” all the time.”

I agree. I think the popularised idea (”as seen on TV”) that happiness means living in a constant state of joy is a major contributing factor to high levels of dissatisfaction. It seems to me it would be difficult to avoid feeling depressed if you believe you have to live in a constant state of joy to be “happy” and experience every day the impossibility of achieving that.

For me, happiness comes and goes and most of the time I don’t notice whether I’m happy or not. Until somebody asks me.

I think you’ll notice that for our generation, particularly in clinical-depression-prone areas of New York, Boston, San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles/Orange County…a middle-class life is largely unaffordable.

Purchasing a normal house ~$500,000+ is out of reach for the median single income (only 3% of houses are affordable to the median income here) and rent will eat a significant percentage of salary. Then add higher taxes, higher costs of living, forget about being picky about jobs. As a young professional here, even a slightly higher salary won’t be able to make those $4,000+ per month mortgage payments, but the other choice is to rip out our social circles and close families to move out to mid-sized cities. Many aren’t willing to do that, (for prestige, for fear) so that’s where the silent depression comes from.

In these hot-zones, you have is legions of well-educated, talented professionals with $100,000+ school loans who cannot afford to start a family. Even at $70,000 a year almost all of the well-paid Google-hires can only afford rent, which means our financial assets hemorrage, and everyone feeling pessimistic that greedy speculators have cheated out our most promising brain talent of the ability to have a nest-egg for family. What about those service industry people who earn less? Choice for the 20-something to stay in the state: move back home with disappointed parents, or, rent a place and live like a naive bachelor until your late 30s without a house title to your name. I cannot stress how many 40-year-olds here still living in a small condo, barely making mortgage payments because of this real-estate madness, and these are our nation’s hardworking intelligensia and innovators we are screwing over. Not a wise investment for America’s future.

This depression linked with unaffordable cities is formidable in Taiwan, Japan, Israel, England and Western Europe too.

I’m generally an optimist, but seeing my MIT/Princeton/Columbia/Stanford colleagues bound by financial slavery and forced into $80,000+ stress-jobs to pay off debts helps explain an external cause to despair. Those earning under $50,000 are drowning, and no they aren’t spending brashly, they are paying off debts and the $3.99 tomatoes, and no the high-end sophisticated engineering jobs they’ve been trained for simply aren’t in Minnesota. These are friends of mine who live in SF, LA, NY be barely able to afford the room for having children, or mistakes, because a house is out of reach. It’s slavery.

Of course, there are wiser decisions and drastic measures. We can hope that there’s a start-ups elsewhere (ha!) or just move there and let our invested skills atrophy. Moving out requires resilience and major costs and headaches too, but, that’s a major reason my friends who choose to remain in coastal CA, Boston and New York become that depressed. The strain is unbelievable.