It shouldn't be an excuse for not making people's lives better long term, but you also have to treat people where they are in life.

In some ways, certain problems seem to emerge from modern lives being too comfortable for the environment our brains are adapted for, but it's not as if unhappiness is a new thing, we just have better tools to treat it now. My life is about as good as any life can reasonably be expected to be economically, and I have as much social interaction as I want... but I'm still anxious (without sertraline).

It really seems like humans have been fairly unhappy throughout history, are fairly unhappy now in the best societies, and are fairly unhappy now in the worst societies too. We're a pretty unhappy species prone to quite a lot of mental health problems. Only difference being that in the past, eventually hunger would override your unhappiness and you'd have to get up and do something about it, which would take your mind off worrying about dying from that worsening foot infection and mourning over the twelve kids you've had die in their childhood.

I would also suggest that being overly negative around psychiatric meds itself can be harmful. I know many people who lived deeply unhappy lives and avoided taking them for years over fears of side effects and things they'd read about, only for them to eventually give in and wonder why they hadn't done it years ago. They do have side effects, but man, as a N=1, all I can say is sertraline improved every single aspect of my life. It's indescribable how much I owe to that compound.