We understand a great deal more about the brain than we used to, but there is still so much we don't yet know. At what point does a depressed person make the decision that the pain of living is worse than the finality of death? Each person is an individual, responding to life events and physical and mental illness, including depression, on highly personal terms.

It can be easy to be judgmental if you've never experienced the depths of despair that can lead someone to consider suicide as the only escape. If you have experienced this, however, you understand why and how this can be. There are no words that can give voice to this total and ultimate sense of hopelessness.

What's the link between depression and suicide? You can't reason with depression. It takes over and becomes almost a living entity, wearing away at your resolve to see it through, and there can come a time when the struggle seems more than you're capable of. That doesn't mean that everyone who is depressed goes on to commit suicide.

But thoughts of suicide are common, especially among the severely depressed. Pain hurts, and the pain of depression goes so deep that it can become too much. That is when suicide and thoughts of suicide can arise.

What Drives Us

The strongest of our human instincts revolve around the preservation of the species. Self-preservation, reproduction, and the maternal instinct can all be considered aspects of that central focus. In that regard, some important characteristics are shared with other members of the animal world. However, humans are different from them in that people tend to think about their drives — analyzing them, denying them on occasion, and reveling in them, when possible. Suicide raises all manner of interesting questions about the fundamental drives of our species.

Was It Accidental?

When someone who is cared for commits suicide, there's always a faint hope that perhaps the death was really accidental. It's so difficult to accept that someone would actually, purposefully end his or her life. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that slim hope persists. Suicide is a breach of an unwritten and unspoken contract with other members of the human race. It's a premature separation that contributes nothing to the clan.

There are other ramifications of suicide, as well. For a family left behind, struggling financially, an official cause of death that reads suicide can be an automatic termination of life insurance benefits. Now, in addition to the grief, there's real hardship. That hardship can turn initial grief into anger.