anneasquith - I have posted several times of my own personal experience of suicide, but it perhaps bears repeating -
As a Samartian volunteer for three years, I spoke with may suicidal people, and after suffering a complete mental breakdown and being housed in a psych ward for three months, and a subsequent lifetime of medication, I can claim to understand suicide both from an intellectual, and a personal viewpoint.
I would assure anyone who thinks that suicides are 'selfish' for their behavior, let me assure them that such concepts are far beyond the mindset of the suicidal person.
Thoughts of family, and consequences for them, are a very very long way in the past - by this time, all that's left is the pain, which simply cannot be borne any longer, and has to be destroyed.
You don't need to be 'brave' or 'cowardly' to kill yourself, or unfeeling, or selfish, or any emotion. You just need to kill the pain.
To see death as a preferable alternative to life, there is just one place you need to be in your mind - you just need to be desperate enough.