Depressive Realism and Society

In class today we talked about the moment when children become adults.  While many people threw out different ideas concerning age and maturity level, living on your own and being independent from your parents, we struggled to find a solid definition of adult.  Is being an adult a state of mind? Is it economic or social? Without the clear idea of what we were discussing, everyone's answers were personal.  Mr. O'Connor told a story about a boy who clearly knew the exact moment he became a man, age eleven.  The class, upon hearing this, immediately laughed thinking the boy was just juvenile and didn't know what he was talking about.  But he could name a specific moment when his father left leaving him as the sole man of the house, thus forcing him out of childhood.  When we first heard this and laughed our views of manhood where dictated by society; a certain age of 18, living solo and supporting yourself financially defined being a man.  Because this boy fit none of these he was immediately labeled as too young to fully comprehend what being a man meant.  The view of society shaped the definition.

While on StumbleUpon over break I came across an interesting phycology article on a concept called Depressive Realism.  It proposes that those people suffering from depression actually have a clearer view on reality than those whose views are skewed by feelings of optimism and personal success.  If this concept  is true and those who are depressed have a better perception of reality then why does society choose to accept the non-depression as sane?  Society choses all of our ideas of normal and sane.  The views of society control who is medicated and who is labeled sane. They chose the definition of being a man and control the views.  Without society's premeditated ideas on the definitions of these certain ideas, there would be no standard to live up to.  Is not having a clear and set standard of normal a positive of negative concept?  How would living without the normal change our views of those around us and require us to use personal experience to define ourselves rather than society?