I heard someone say recently that they believe that one reason depression may be so prevalent in American society is because people are culturally conditioned to expect everything to turn out well for them. They expect to be financially stable, to have a good job that they enjoy, to be healthy and to have healthy children, and generally to be happy. They do not expect bad things to happen, and so it hits them really hard when bad things DO happen.

I haven't really thought it over much to decide whether I agree with that, but I was reminded of it when I saw your post ....