I don't think even people like the anti-med Robert Whitaker would be against using these medications short-term, for major clinical depression or for other cond

I don't think even people like the anti-med Robert Whitaker would be against using these medications short-term, for major clinical depression or for other conditions where patients are low- or non-functioning; the primary goal there is to get people stable so they can participate in productive behavioral therapy or modification so that they don't need the meds long-term (particularly since afaik the balance of evidence is that the effectiveness of these meds declines to the placebo level over the long term). It's the use of psychiatric medication for relatively minor psychiatric disturbances in high-functioning individuals, and for long periods of time (years), that draws most of the criticism.