its been a bit since ive actually died because my character was depressed and they couldn't heal themselves, usually only become miserable if i am already extremely fucked up and basically cant recover.
Its not bad game design its basically a punishment for eating disgusting shit or getting hurt bad and you typically need to be in absolutely terrible shape health wise to reach that level of sadness
you can counteract that by just doing things that would make you happy like eating yummy foods, over eating also makes you happy so just do what i do and eat every geofruit you can unless you are literaly full
so basically depression is good game design AND its somewhat easy to counteract if you know how. I understand, its a hardcore game