Without meaning to sound antagonistic, you're framing the question in the wrong way.
Research suggests depression is more like blood pressure, varying continuously in the population. There really isn't a clear line between depression-as-illness and other varieties of depression, only an increasing risk of problems as depression increases.
So in one sense, the research does support what you're asking, in that most people who experience depression aren't extremely depressed. But that's sort of tautologically true, in that if you have a normal distribution, most people won't be at the extreme by definition.
It's difficult to approach these things at a deeper level that I think you're getting at, which is "are most people who are depressed not seriously impaired by their depression" or something along those lines. That's harder to answer because it depends on defining "seriously impaired" which depends on sociological trends and so forth and so on.
Research suggests depression is more like blood pressure, varying continuously in the population. There really isn't a clear line between depression-as-illness and other varieties of depression, only an increasing risk of problems as depression increases.
So in one sense, the research does support what you're asking, in that most people who experience depression aren't extremely depressed. But that's sort of tautologically true, in that if you have a normal distribution, most people won't be at the extreme by definition.
It's difficult to approach these things at a deeper level that I think you're getting at, which is "are most people who are depressed not seriously impaired by their depression" or something along those lines. That's harder to answer because it depends on defining "seriously impaired" which depends on sociological trends and so forth and so on.