Depression and the way others react to it varies hugely IRL, and I imagine the same could be said of it in most fictional worlds.
I think if one had the sort of personality that becomes withdrawn and grim when depressed they’d probably fit in fairly well. You could surely find a few such characters in the game – or more than a few. The fact that there really are a lot of reasons besides mental illness to become depressed in their world probably means this kind would often go completely unnoticed; perhaps when they hadn’t experienced anything in particular that might bring it on in most normal people, they’d be thought of as unusually severe, unpleasant, or unhappy types, but I doubt it would cross any charr’s mind that this was anything but a personality trait.
In some ways it may even be beneficial. Though I can’t find it anymore, I read an article a while back that talked about people with depression – assuming of course it wasn’t bad enough that they killed themselves – being better able to cope when their circumstances really were bad than people who hadn’t dealt with those emotions before. Incidentally this fits my experience quite well. Maybe why I find the charr sense of humour so familiar, even though it’s intended (presumably) to reflect the harshness of their circumstances.
On the other hand, for a very social person suffering from depression in charr society, I’m less optimistic about the result. Charr certainly seem far from being anti-social, even if their social groups form and work differently from ours, but at the same time they do seem to highly(!) value overall strength in an individual. Frequently needing emotional support for poorly-understood reasons might then be viewed as a serious character flaw. I think this would be distinct from temporary depression as a result of life issues: in the latter case it’s probably expected they’d receive support from their warband, while if it was an ongoing condition not explainable by circumstances, they may instead come to be viewed as weak, perhaps cowardly, and a drain on their comrades.
What exactly would happen to them I’m not sure, and I suppose it would depend on whether or not they were able to hold their own well enough when it mattered. If they appeared weaker than usual emotionally, but were nonetheless dependable, I gather they’d end up like a more intellectual version of Dinky. Perhaps society at large wouldn’t be too kind to them, but their warband would presumably understand their limitations and work around them.
Really severe cases I assume would end badly. They’d quite likely – as with a very severely depressed but unsociable person who could not work in a group – find themselves gladiums (er… gladii?). The difference being that the latter may have wanted that all along, or at least would be less effected by it. For the social types, unless they managed to befriend other warbandless charr or even fell in with other races and found that life more suited to them, I doubt they’d live very long or pleasant lives.
