Distinguishing low mood from major depression

I think there is still much confusion between depression(normal mood) and major depression and so I thought I would share my thoughts on how I distinguish one from the other. How I distinguish normal moods from major depression:

• Normal moods usually last a fairly short time and are less severe-- often less than a day. Major depression is a moderate to severe depressed mood for at minimum two weeks. Moderate to severe often means thinking about suicide quite a bit.
• With a normal mood one can often tie it to something that has happened or a given thought
•  The mood within major depression is often connected to the circadian rhythms. Often people feel worse in the morning(often suicidal) and their mood improves in the evening
• Distraction will often work with normal moods but not with major depression
• The depressed mood in major depression is often accompanied with severe fatigue(bedridden), lack of motivation, disrupted appetite, lack of pleasure, cognitive problems, and excessive sleepiness/insomnia
• Major depression affects your ability to function on a basic level. Good hygiene seems optional for people who normal have good hygiene

Antipsychiatrists who could be referred to as "lumpers" don't make the above distinctions. They believe everyone experiences depression which is true but not everyone experiences moderate to severe depression that lasts more than two weeks and is accompanied by other symptoms. They also argue that the criteria that distinguish major depression are arbitrary which is also true but many distinctions in life are to a degree arbitrary and yet are still respected. I , a "splitter", sometimes wish that they would come up with a new name for major depression so it wouldn't constantly be confused with a normal low mood.

Joanna Moncrieff and the anti-psychiatry movement

Recently I visited the Mad in America website and commented on an article and video by Joanna Moncrieff.

Moncrieff is a psychiatrist in the UK who has written a number of books against the use of drugs and the idea of a bipolar spectrum. Since we both appeared to have the same opinion regarding the efficacy of antidepressants I thought some exchange might be interesting. In a comment, I wrote that I wish I had taken medication sooner than I had and that anti-psychiatrists appear to be  in a hurry to normalize mental disorders despite the lack of evidence for many of them one way or the other. In response a man replied that I hadn't paid attention to the previous discussion and how disastrous all psychiatric drugs/labels are. Here is an excerpt from her article.

Professional interests drove the transformation of antipsychotics from special sorts of tranquilisers into so-called ‘magic bullets’ back in the 1960s. It was this idea that antipsychotics constituted a sophisticated and targeted treatment, rather than a chemical suppressant, that obscured their unpleasant, mind-altering effects, thus enabling the pharmaceutical industry to expand their use over recent years

Now, I can see pluses and minuses to psychiatry however the people on this site are quite black and white. I am willing to bet for every story of someone harmed by psychiatry there is at least one who feels like he/she was saved by it. It is true that many people are being treated with drugs they don't need and perhaps mislabeled but there certainly are people who desparately need drugs and some name to describe their problem. For some reason we expect psychiatry to perform on par with other medical specialties even though we still know very little about the brain.