Was it the case that Schopenhauer was as grumpy in real life as he was in his writing (at least, when he was not around his mother, with whom I understand he had a fairly nasty literary competition)? Because it's possible that taking pessimism to its extreme in his philosophical musings took the edge off of it in the project of getting through the day.
It does seem possible, if one is not utterly debilitated, to opt out of the SSRI culture -- hardly anyone is going to make an adult go to the doctor and get Prozac. True, there is more social pressure to "take care of" moods that don't fit with the range considered desirable, but grumpy people often have the wherewithal to tell the perky people to take a flying leap.
Moreover, it seems utterly reasonable that a realistic view of the state of the world and the human condition sometimes calls for a bad mood. It doesn't always make living fun. But, it might put you in a place to assess the problem and perhaps even start making real changes in the way we're living, rather than just getting the meds to change the way we feel about it.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness- Seneca.
Plato?s cave 2005
The following is poetry, not to be taken seriously:
?The normal people are really crazy, and the crazy people are sane.
This world is a psychiatric hospital. The nurses and doctors are the priests of the
Sciences, Business, and the Arts-they are the best patients-they need no pills-they are brainwashed. Every now and then someone wakes up to the fact that they are in the
Hospital. They see the systems and the absurd rituals performed in the hospitals.
First they try to wake the other people to the fact, they do this knowing that
They will be called crazy, and that the other patients can?t hear what they are
Saying no matter what they tell them. When the genius/madman speaks to his fellow patient, they just stay quiet and say nothing out of fear of having to actually speak and think. He really wants to wake up the smart quiet patients that say nothing. The best patients, the smart quiet ones, get to become nurses and even the doctors after some time. The madman, genius, finally decides that only a minute amount of people wake up.
So he finally decides to write a book, hoping that he can communicate through time
To another person who will also wake up centuries later, who can write another
Book that will eventually be able to wake up more patients, or make changes to
The system in the hospital. The mad genius could keep quiet and try to become a
Nurse or even a doctor and try to reform the system a little bit, but the time used to
Get to be a doctor or a nurse could be used more usefully writing the books.
Eventually the madman, after his death, finally gets called a genius centuries later-and his book is put on the shelf, and a minute amount of patients pick up, read, and understand it. The really smart madmen can balance their writing of truth, with their acting as a nurse/doctor. If Schopenhauer took the pills/and psychiatric brainwashing-he would have never wrote his great book, but made the gradual step back to become a silent patient. ?

I disagree. Schopenhauer's penetrating intellect would have seen through all the therapy and psychology nonsense so beloved in our day. His therapy was thinking, reading, and writing.

Are we allowed to say he might be getting too mixed up between two different views of the self? The idea that our lives must be innately meaningful seems to go hand in hand with the religious belief in the afterlife. But if we discount the afterlife as implausible (as I understand Schopenhauer does) aren't we asking a little too much that our lives be somehow innately meaningful? In more speculative, tea-drinking moments I seem to be able to accept the notion that if all I am is an element in a vast causal chain (and not, it should be added, an easy to isolate element - not something I can easily delineate and say 'such is me') that meaning rather dries up. Is this wrong? Or is that Schopenhauers problem - he feels this too but it depresses him?
To actually try to answer the question asked; surely we should be asking whether or the pharmacological answers offered to psychological problems are actually helpful. It seems to be a case of supressing the symptoms rather than treating the cause and ditto to a lesser extent with 'talk therapy'. As far as I can understand it Schopenhauer understood fully what he was depressed about and it was that understanding with depressed him. Short of trying to convince him that life essentially was 'meaningless' in the way he looked at it but that didn't really change matters much, I can't see any real solution to problem of the man himself.
Is it a real problem if life is meaningless?

I am entirely in line with what Curmudgeon wrote above. Schopenhauer exemplifies a clarity of thought and presentation that is rare in the history of philosophy. It is further evident that he must have had an extrememly healthy and well-balanced mind. He was neutrally concerned with the truth of the matter- what really is, and how it is. His affinity with eastern thought (Hinduism, Buddhism) influenced and cultivated this line of thinking as well. It is true that a depressed person will see no purpose in living. Schopenhauer understood that there was no point to life on a grand or universal scale, but still dedicated his entire life to the attempt of offering a well-balanced and neutral account of our existence, the suffering it entails, and the ways in which people aesthetically and morally seek to avoid it- in short, make the best out of this miserable life. It isn't about what they ought to do, but what they do. (the denial of the will, and extinction of the individual ego showcased as the highest pursuit of all great religions.)
For Schopenhauer to have sorted through all of the material that he did- which was more than any philsopher before and after him, and to arrive at a just notion of the world afterwards, showcases a depth and character of a mind that was well in control of itself. For Schopenhauer, just because life is miserable and pointless does not mean that we cannot overcome it and live well. The suffering state of the world is precisely the reason we continually seek for well-being!-or we'd be unconditionally content.

I think that A-Schop was as inconsistent as he thought a fool should be. If one reads the collection of Schopenhauer essays in succession, one after the other, then one would find that the tone of his opinions, or "observations" if you wish, (everyone has an opinion) changed with his age; this is to say that his teachings changed. What was Schopenhauer if not emotionally driven? I'm sorry, I love his writings, and I do not wish to cheapen his intellect, but I think that the man simply wanted to be loved. Plain and simple. This means, to I, that even he didn't completely believe half of what he wrote.

Don't all observations change with age? Try reading your comment again and think about the subject some more after these years, read other works of Schopenhauer, etcetera, and examine your thoughts on it. Big chance you think different or that you're thoughts on the subject evolve when gaining more experience or knowledge.