Of course. I know no one who would not take this for granted. A rather large proportion of the depressed people I know had suffered from child abuse or spousal abuse. But that does not in the least change the fact that, _however_ generated, depression _must_ take the form of changed brain activity, which in turn can be affected both by social and/or chemical means.
Too damn much either/or goes on in discussion of mental illnesses.
And a label is also a social act. Quite a few of the students who at various times showed up in my office after I had mentioned that I suffered from depression labelled their illness as a "chemical imbalance." That is esseentially nonsense -- but it is also a hell of a good starting point for many in coming to terms with the lllness. So labelling it, in other words, was a therapeutic act. I never challenged them, but I did always hope that eventually they would learn it was more complicated than that. To challenge them on the label would have been, in most instances, the equivalent of saying, "You're just making excuses for yourself." The first part of the NAMI slogan, "Mental illness is a brain disorder, not a character defect," as I believe I mentioned on another post recently, is at best over-simplified, but the second clause is an essential part of making mental illness treatable by any means.
Carrol