This paper reviews the author's research on the social origins of depression begun in the early 1970s. It emphasizes the importance of taking account of the context and meaning of proximal causal factors by the use of investigator-based ratings using intensive interviews and the need to extend research to cover a whole lifetime. The implications of the research program that has involved some twenty inquiries in a variety of cultural settings is discussed in terms of the importance of both a comparative and an evolutionary perspective concerning meaning that bring together the biology involved in an evolutionary perspective emphasizing a common human nature with one that takes account of cultural and individual differences. In short an approach that take seriously a biopsychosocial perspective.