I woke one morning with a crushing sense of depression.

Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.

I grew up with him and shared the same bedroom; he's never been violent.

We were the only ones who held the keys, the only ones who could end the violence.

Depression increases with latitude and cloud cover.

If he decided to kill himself, I don't know where he was at, whether it was depression or a rational act. I suppose suicide could be rationally justified as an alternative to being held in our prisons.