First off, I am not offended by your post though I can see why some people here maybe.
I am glad you put this here because maybe it shows you are wanting to learn and if you are wanting to learn, there is a possibility that you have an open mind and want to change how you think about this.
No person, no matter if they have been depressed or not, can truly understand another person exactly (even if they have had almost exact experiences) because everyone thinks differently, has their own views about things and is different.
So while a therapist that has experienced negative events in there life and has decided to help others that have been through the same or similar situations, they cannot even understand perfectly.
Helping someone that is depressed requires compassion, empathy and listening. It requires medication where necessary to fix chemical imbalances and other therapies as well if the person is not agreeable to medication or wants to take a more hollistic approach.
I am willing to talk to you about this farther through
PM if you would like.
I do not mind explaining things (if I can find the right words) and I am always glad when someone wants to understand me better before they go judging and criticizing.
Your post may have come across as judging but I view it is a rather direct, uneducated way of saying you want to learn more. You may not have worded things as nicely as some may have liked but there we are again: back to our experiences, they shape how we react, comprehend and take things.
I prefer to take an open approach before I go and tell someone they are ignorant because if someone has no idea about something, the only conclusion they can form is based off of their lack of education and telling them they have "lack of knowledge or information" would only be pointing out the obvious (definition of ignorance).
It is like people that are blind (as I am) that get upset when someone tries to help them. They start cursing or getting angry and tell the person off. The thing is, people try to help us because they think we are in capable and cannot see themselves in our situation. Do I blame them? No, I do not because I look at myself and I try to imagine myself in there place. If I saw someone walking down a road with a cane and knew that meant they could not see and I were sighted, I would get worried too and my humanly instinct to assist them would turn on and I would want to help. Not out of trying to cause a problem but out of wanting to make a difference.
Do I think that ignorance is right, no. But can I be mad at people for not knowing what they just do not know, no. Some people just have never learned what I have learned or what someone else has learned and some people have not had the same oppurtunities I have had or have not had to help them come to the same conclusions and understanding about certain things.
I think that now this is all I would like to say here.
Again, I am open to a
PM about this if you would like to talk farther.
Do not feel bad about posting because I did something like this about a year ago in an online group I was in with other blind people. My goal was to help them but most of them told me off and got mad but overtime some of them realized that I was trying to make them think. Though our posts are vastly different, I believe we had the same goal: trying to understand others and become better people.
I know that some people here will read this and probably think I am crazy but this is just how I thought about this post (and all of the replies to it which I read and thought through).