Childhood issues with emotional abuse/bullying can & do cause emotional systems to become unbalanced though.
It is not a matter of pure free will. If our emotional brain has been trained to scream at us with anxiety at a specific situation or if it is constantly on high alert it becomes tiring to maintain composure and outbursts may provide an outlet.
Now, a person can recognise this issue and visit a therapist to seek help with their emotional issues. But it first requires them to have recognition of the problem. I do not think it's an exceptional case where people are oblivious of their emotional brain causing them to have an irrational reaction to a situation. In fact I think it is quite common.
I find the that those who use this as some sort of argument against feminism often are ignoring the emphasis feminists put on social conditioning as an influencing and oppressive factor on the behaviour of each gender.
Just because a country, by law, affords women the same rights as men that doesn't mean it's a country which is free of the social conditioning which force certain expectations upon each gender. These are things that are inherited from previous generations and do not go away so easily.
People use these results to imply something like "when people are free to do what they want they tend to their 'natural' gender role". But I don't believe this statement can be justified as countries with "more gender equality" (i.e. better women's rights) have yet to shed themselves of societal idioms and culture that feminist theory would call oppressive. I.e. traditional gender roles in the media, toys etc.
I think a more accurate statement would be "when people are free to do what they want, they will tend to behaviours they're conditioned toward." After all, as we can see in the "less gender equality" countries, larger percentages of women in society can and do enjoy careers in STEM fields. What would be interesting is to see 10-20 years down the line how some countries progress and how these behaviours feedback into the next generation.
That's an interesting post, though I do think the cause you've suggested is only a subset of possible causes of depression.
Depression is an illness that is defined by its symptoms. The causes are diverse and can be deeply personal. This is unlike most other illnesses, where there is a much smaller set of possible causes for a given set of symptoms. For some illnesses the causes are unavoidable, I can't do anything to prevent the catching a cold, I have to step outside and interact with the world where the virus lives. For others causes can be addressed, for example, I experience stomach pains after drinking milk so I stop drinking it.
The current state of mental health care is in terrible shape. Doctors do not have the time to provide psychiatric advice but they do have just about enough time to sign off SSRI prescriptions. Your pills may help you get through the day a bit easier but if you do not address the cause of your illness your symptoms will eventually surface again. There are cases where perhaps the cause is completely due to a chemical imbalance but from all I've read about depression, this seems rare. Most of the time the suffer needs help addressing the root cause of their depression. Sometimes it's learned helpnessness which needs a change in our mental model, sometimes its about quitting destructive habits/addictions or sometimes we understand reality completely and just need to change our behaviors to become satisfied with life.
Except western society is filled with drug addicts despite having the freedom to consume removed.
People are going to consume drugs and develop maladaptive coping mechanisms of one sort or another regardless of what's legal or not.
Personal freedom is great because people aren't punished for having personal issues.