It's not fair to tar people from any group. There are certain individuals within the loose atheism bunch who haven't ceased buying into the fundamentalist model they are trying to get away from and to help others get away from. I see good motives in them. And surely it's good to be realistically pessimistic. Despair is no grounds for agression - or counteragression.

I'm an atheist.
I believe I have nothing to look forward to.
I am depressed.
However, none of these things caused any of the others. You are mistaking correlation for causation.

Also, I am not "negative-minded". I actually describe myself as depressingly optimistic. I so often believe I can bring about a positive outcome that it is increasingly depressing when things don't work out the way they should if people were rational and intelligent.

Who says things are "bad"? Sounds like you are reading Your negativity into others!

So what I am hearing is that somehow sitters on the fence are better off than those on one side (the greener grass side).

I think you misjudge. What in hell is the difference between agnostic and atheist? I like Bart Ehrman's bit on the difference. "Agnostics think that atheists are just arrogant agnostics, and atheists think that agnostics are just wimpy atheists." It seems you express a bit of an arrogant tag because you feel agnostics are more optimistic and forward looking? Maybe you are just trying to get a rise out of the folks here?
I don't talk about god(s) any more. Heaven doesn't exist, so immaterial entities have no place to reside....except between human ears. Religion is fraudulent and all of the divine is BS. GROG

Turn away. I don't care what you think. We don't try to convert or proselytize. If you're fearful enough to need a crutch in life, that's your world. Try slug.com.

I feel it’s more the people that have active PTS from their past religious experiences that are depressed/negative. People that either were always atheist or have long since recovered generally seem to be fine to me.

Also, this post is very judgmental and...well...negative, ironically.

Do you really believe this or are you just trying to get a lot of points?

Your post is so judgmental I'm beginning to think you might actually be a Christian.

I am most certainly not depressed. Far from it. As a look at my posts will reveal, I am abnormally optimistic and stoic. I have had cancer for the past four years. Do any of my posts dwell on it? No. If relevant, I may mention it in passing.
Your post reminds me of the mathematician who, having observed that 1, 3, 5 and 7 are prime numbers concludes that all odd numbers are prime.

I say what you have written is completely without foundation and based on no evidence other than your own assumptions. First of all our personality types vary regardless of our belief or degrees of disbelief in a god or gods, and we all are roughly spilt into either pessimists or optimists and introverts and extroverts. These personality traits are genetic and have nothing to do with our beliefs. Secondly, clinical depression is a serious illness which is caused by many factors, although having a pessimistic or introverted personality can make it more likely that you will suffer from depressive illness. Being an atheist is not a recognisable contributory factor in depressive illness, and nor are those who are atheists more likely to be “negative minded“ as you put it.

I am a lifelong atheist, an extrovert and an optimist. There are other atheists, who may of course be introverted and pessimistic, I’m sure there are, but we do not all have the same characteristics, just as agnostics don’t, and believers don’t. What I do find curious is this incessant need to accentuate and point up the differences between atheists and agnostics here on the site, which is divisive and contentious, and in my opinion completely unnecessary. We have much more in common with each other than we do with believers and we need to accentuate the positives between us and try our best to minimise the negatives. Not posting this kind of nonsense would be a step in the right direction,

The purpose of the post is what? As far as I can tell people who dye their hair blue are totally insecure with themselves as they hate their natural color of hair. What do they have to look forward to are things as bad as they think?
I dye my hair green. I'm much more optimistic and forward thinking. If I was considering a blue hair life and I came on here I'd be discouraged and turn away.
What say you?

"As far as I can tell..." you say? With a post and generalizations like that, I don't think you can tell all that much.

If someone wrote this post and replaced atheist with agnostic, you'd be up in arms. Honestly.