I wish people would stop saying this.
Our understanding of the brain is not sufficiently sophisticated to allow us to identify the "root cause" (whatever that means) of depression in most people. Indeed we have no reason to believe that there even is a root cause to most people's depression.
If you take antidepressants, go to therapy (or meditate or exercise or whatever), then go off them and still feel good, that's great.
And if you take antidepressants indefinitely because doing so improves your life, that's also great! Your life is improved! This isn't an "abuse" of the drugs.
No psychiatrist is making you do anything. They're advising you based on their clinical judgement and experience, but ultimately it's your decision to take the pills or not. If your goal is to go on antidepressants temporarily, any decent psychiatrist will support you in that (because, again, they understand that they can't make you take the pills one day longer than you want to).
I've been on Lexapro and done evidence-based therapy for years. They both have been helpful, but if I had to pick one, I'd immediately pick Lexapro. For me it is a miracle drug. And the miracle is, I can choose how I feel.
(I also added a small dose of Buspar to help with the sexual side-effects.)
If you're on the fence about trying an antidepressant, I really encourage you to talk to a psychiatrist. If you try it and hate it, then you can stop. But a lot of people try it and love it. And I think a lot more people would be willing to try it if the notion that this is somehow "wrong" were gone.
For further reading I recommend https://lorienpsych.com/2021/06/05/depression/. I don't agree with everything Scott Alexander says, but his writing about mental health specifically has been useful to me.
