I feel that "Inside Out" is more of a rites of passage story, where the falling of those childhood 'infrastructures' is due to change, especially disruptive ones (just the denial of "sadness" felt a little too simplistic).

But I think with depression, there is less 'logic'; it's much harder for you to follow what the hell is going on. Kinda like a big mess of yarn that's so knotted up you really wanna grab a pair of scissors and cut them up, and throw them in the fire for good measure. It's destructive, and that's why depression is awfully dangerous. Now you might think that the process itself will lead to that blank slate - I gave a pile of cards metaphor earlier - enabling a chance to build better and even turn the experience to some sort of character enrichment. But it's not that glamorous; not everyone can hold on for that long. I do count myself extremely lucky.

But one thing the film definitely got right was the concept of support. Riley eventually got through by allowing herself to break down and tell her parents everything, acknowledging the bits that she consciously feels to be weak, pathetic et cetra, like sadness. And that's really important for someone who's depressed; you will not be able to help yourself. Contrary to your belief, you need outside support to help you battle those demons and tell you that A is A and not a+b+c-d. It might be difficult to find good support, and initially I didn't either, but I knew my mom to be fundamentally caring about me and by approaching her, we slowly went down the road to detangle the mess. I'm not gonna kid, it was rocky as we didn't have a very good relationship, but we got there eventually. And learnt a bit more about humanity.