Does it take courage or cowardice to commit suicide?

[Angrboda]

I think that hope requires a reasonable expectation that the thing hoped for can reasonably be achieved. If one is denied this either by nature of mental infirmness, or by the simple reality that one is facing, such as with a terminal illness, then I think it reasonable to consider ending one's life. To expect a person who is deprived of hope to act otherwise, is, I think onerous and unreasonable. Hope is an essential ingredient for life, and without it, all options are undesirable. I don't think choosing death in that situation is an example of cowardice.

As to the rest, I agree that it's going to depend a lot upon the specifics. In my case, my suicidal impulses were fueled by the delusion that I was a stranded soul, in a foreign body and only able to return to my home dimension by killing myself, and thus returning to a war in another land that I had a duty to fight. I didn't want to die, per se, but felt that it was necessary. To ascribe my motives for suicide to "cowardice" would be to make a generalization which did not apply.

My last suicide attempt, I took a bottle full of sleeping pills and went out in -20 F weather to die by hypothermia. I have always been afraid of attempting to die and failing, which has precluded many potential methods; I do not see my facing that fear and attempting to end my life anyway as an act of cowardice. In that last attempt, I lost nine fingers due to frostbite. I know the potential consequences of a failed attempt are real. I do not know whether I would ever consider another attempt, both because I no longer suffer those delusions, but also because I know intimately the cost of failure. I do not think that any such attempt would be reasonably described as cowardice.

At the same time, being deprived of hope, for whatever reason, emboldens one in ways of which those not so affected may not understand. So in some sense, the circumstances may make the act, if not 'easy', at least in some sense, 'easier'.