In the economic sense that may be true. But in the psychiatric sense, serious depression makes physical death look like a party. In physical death your heart stops beating, no more breaths are taken and the brain ceases to function. Slowly the body begins to cool and the stiffness of rigormortis settles in. This all happens without the knowledge of the deceased.
Depression is akin to the beginning of a mental ice age.
Before the victim understands what is happening the warmth of the sun is replaced by the onrushing freeze. He is dying a mental death. His brain begins to slow down like a mountain stream in the dead of a harsh winter. Thoughts barely trickle between the ice that blocks their free flow. He desperately seeks the warmth that will melt the glaciers that are carving deep dark crevices in his psyche.