Different ways of understanding "low mood"

Is low mood, "depression," best understood as "mental illness?" Can we apply a lens other than disease theory and have more ways to approach, understand, and navigate this?

The sooner we as a society and healthcare system understand that "mind" is not a domain of well-developed expertise in biomedical science, the sooner we will be open to using different lenses, and we will help more people decrease suffering and unfold their potential. This does not mean that everything we are doing is wrong, but rather that we happen to get some things right despite a grossly insufficient and ignorant approach.

When vision is insufficient, adaptation and development can be seen as illness. In such a society, the loss comes from not only the unnecessary suffering of so many, which would be terrible enough, but its further compounding by the loss of human potential that society suffers from the stunting of many developing minds.

https://philarchive.org/rec/TURBFB