If you want to help someone who is suffering from depression, who you think or know may be feeling suicidal, it's helpful to understand the facts about what you're facing. Firstly, any depressed person might decide to kill themselves. They can be any age, any social class. And it's little realised that suicide is a very common way to die in Western society today. In the US it's the 9th leading cause of death, killing over 32,000 people every year, an average of about one suicide every 15 minutes.
Depression is quite simply an horrific state to be in.
And with all of this comes an overwhelming sense of worthlessness, which is only made worse by knowing what is going on, or having attention drawn to it. The longer a person is depressed, the less joy there is in their life, and the easier it becomes to lose more and more of the things that matter. There is less and less left to live for. If they often become depressed, then suicidal thoughts can even become familiar and easy, and it only takes one difficult situation, even seemingly small, to completely destroy them. Each time the depression returns, their worthlessness and hopelessness is confirmed.