I think "negative life events" are more of a symptom than a cause. Temporary grief over loss or other genuinely bad things happening in life is normal in health

I think "negative life events" are more of a symptom than a cause. Temporary grief over loss or other genuinely bad things happening in life is normal in healthy people. What's so different about depression is that the patient seems to feel bad without a clear cause. You hear them going on about things that to a healthy person don't seem like such a big deal, or easy to fix, or so long ago a healthy person would have been over it by now. It's more a sign of the depressed brain trying to rationalize why it feels bad, and looking for outside causes to blame.