a person flooded with constant thoughts of how terrible everything is and the distorted thinking that the world doesn't need them or may even be better without them aren't look at death as a great thing, they are like a person trapped at the top of a burning building and they can sit there and burn to death or jump off and escape the encroaching flames. They choose jumping, not because it is a good choice, it is simply the lesser of two bad ones.

That's a paraphrasing of David Foster Wallace describing his battle with depression.