The word cowardly used in an argument like this is partisan. It belies your position. The idea that killing yourself is an easy escape comes from an ignorant mind. (literal ignorance). Killing yourself is not an easy decision. Cowardly might be actions like walking away from a responsibility. Its arrogant to assume anyone has a responsibility to stay alive for anyone other than themselves.
For my own opinion, I think suicide is a sad end result, but I'm hesitant to feel badly for them. Depression is, in a majority of cases, an ailment that's easily beaten. I look at suicide as either a failure of the person or the persons friends/family to successfully change situations to address the problem.
On NPR recently they had a reporter tell a story of his trip to Africa. He went to study a tribal cure for depression and it involved dancing naked outside, covered in ram's blood with people dancing around you, and everyone chanting and at the end saying something to the effect of "dear bad spirits, please leave me to my own life." (he went through it for his own depression)
That was in Senegal, he goes back to another country in Africa years later for something totally unrelated and starts talking to a guy about it. He say "yeah we have something like that, but we actually had a host of Western Psychologists come here to fight depression, and we actually had to ask them to leave."
When he asked what had happened, the guy tells him "well they were just really bizarre. They didn't have you get in the sun, which everyone knows fights depression, and they didn't have them dance or sing or anything else that really gets you up. They made you sit in a dark room and talk about bad things that had happened to you."
He opened his story with some statement like "I study depression. I found that if you have brain cancer, and standing on your head and gargling water makes you feel better you probably still have brain cancer. However, if you have depression, and standing on your head and gargling water makes you feel better, you're actually better."
That about sums up my feelings on the subject. People can find things that make them feel better. I still believe a great deal of people like the attention depression gives them so suggestions from friends are ignored. Those folks generally don't kill themselves. I find if someone is actually suffering from depression they are willing to pursue solutions.
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