What's the difference between unhappiness and depression?

What's the difference between unhappiness and depression?

Lynn Ianni (Psychotherapist) gives expert video advice on: Can psychotherapy help me become happier?; How is a therapist's perspective on happiness different?; What can a therapist teach the rest of the world about happiness? and more...

Depression specifically if it's chronic, clinical depression is based in biochemistry which also has some learned elements associated with it. It's a long-standing pattern of being dissatisfied, lethargic, the patterns and problems with sleeping and eating, so it manifests in so many different ways in different degrees for different people. So unhappiness, the way I'm looking it at right now is more a state of mind and it's a situational kind of an experience. You can certainly be chronically unhappy but it has to do with your perspective on the world and it's very important and I think probably the most crucial element in terms of looking at whether or not a person's happy or unhappy generally is to recognize whether or not they understand that happiness is their choice or unhappiness is their choice. So it's not what happens to you, it's how you respond to what happens to you that determines whether or not you're happy or unhappy generally.