Depresson - it's not just "feeling sad"; it's a condition where you have literally hit the bottom without an obvious way out of it. Depression of the clinical variety can be especially long-lasting and incapacitating. Unfortunately, "depressed" has become synonymous with "a bit sad/out of it" which really undermines the seriousness of the problem. I would daresay the "we all get depressed sometimes" argument is completely bulls**t and not many people actually experience it properly, thankfully. "Feeling sad" isn't in the DSM-IV as far as I am aware, except as a symptom. It's shocking that people can't grasp the fact that depression is actually a very serious problem and you can't just "man up" and walk away from it. You can act like there's nothing bothering all you as much as you damn well please. It will break you eventually. Sometimes you just can't discourage it [suicide]. A lot of more successful suicides seem to be rather spur-of-the-moment decisions rather than things that have been carefully planned - unless you're fortunate enough to come across your friend when he's about to carry the act out, what are you going to do about it? I'm quite sure we can all agree on the fact that it really is not one of the best causes of action to take; however, when you have been through something life-changingly negative, it can often feel that you have nothing else to live for. Fortunately, some people are lucky enough to pull through and recover. Others can't take living anymore. I agree with Dan - chemical imbalance does play a big part in suicidality. A lot of people get long periods of suicidal ideation yet never act on it, whereas other people will completely snap and carry it out almost instantaneously. Moral or not? I don't think we, as bystanders, are allowed to decide.