Am I THAT different? Really?

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To me, if a person is my friend I have good feelings towards them and want them to be happy

Wanting to commit suicide is the ultimate in not being happy so I would therefore be correspondingly very concerned for my friend and want to help them; to try and help them feel better so they didn't want to kill themselves and could continue being my friend, as I enjoy their company

Otherwise I can't see the point in seeing the person as a friend - the term becomes meaningless and some kind of status symbol to make people feel good about themselves in
that they can say to themselves "I've got loads of friends therefore I must be a really popular worthwhile person".

It's your level of compassion towards your friend whatever they are going through that denotes you as a true friend in my opinion. Harsh judging is not compassion; it's ego-driven and selfish.

I would say your friend needs to look for new friends herself; it's not her who needs to come up to your standard - it's you who are the failure here!

If one of my friends tried to or actually committed suicide I'd be the one feeling guilty, thinking what could I have done to prevent this?

You evidently lack compassion - if you want to excuse this as being due to some neurological condition that's up to you but it's in the interest of both yourself and your friend to try and emulate compassionate behaviour even if you don't actually understand it or feel it.

I've noticed that when a person gets depressed their friends often vanish as they aren't fulfilling the 'entertain me' aspect that a lot of friendships seem to be almost solely based on.
This isn't true friendship in my opinion.

You're being rather illogical about this, however. You acknowledged that you are speaking of mental illness, but you then go on to say that it's too irrational and you have a moral code that governs your behavior. The fact is that mental illness involves distorted thinking and perceptions to varying degrees. I explained earlier in this thread about the thoughts that lead to suicide because I've experienced them. Pensieve explained her experiences in some detail as well.

Often, suicidal ideation involves something called "cognitive distortion" in which a person's perceptions of whether it's worth it to stay alive are very far removed from the reality of the situation. It looks and feels rational to them, even though you do not see it as rational from the outside. Logically, people reach this conclusion because they believe they have no way out, even if they really do hve a way out. It's not that easy to think your way out of it and for some it may simply be impossible...or so exhausting that it shifts from possible to impossible.

It's a mental illness for a reason, in that it impacts one's mental functioning. It's not accurate to judge a mentally ill person's behaviors by the standards of someone who does not have a mental illness, or at least the same or similar mental illness.

My take on it is, whatever it is, is enough to override the instinct for self-preservation. That's one of the most basic functions, very much hard-wired and strongly tied to involuntary physiological responses. Whatever causes someone to attempt suicide, overrides THAT. So it has to be something incredibly powerful.

Expecting much less deep rooted, much less stable functions like reasoning etc to remain intact while this force is in operation doesn't seem to make sense.

I cannot comprehend it either. No experience of mine relates, and I have no solution to help. If it happened to me, I don't think I'd want to have to deal with a whole bunch of simulated "empathy". The person who did the most to take concrete measures to reduce my stress, and restore an atmosphere of calm and normalcy, would be the one I'd identify as being the most genuinely sympathetic. So that's the sort of thing I do when people are in distress.

Yeah, I don't understand it either. I never wanted to kill myself. The worst I ever got was the point where I felt that I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to live either. And that was, I guess, for a few moments. I'm too scared of death, no matter how depressed I am. I dread the idea of the extinction of my ego.

But I don't judge people for attempting suicide. Humans' lives are not always rational, but also dominated by emotions. Even perfectly rational people can get profoundly emotional at times. Moreover, sometimes one believes that they're rational and, when, in fact, they might get to be very irrational. Just a reminder to those people who really believe in their rationality: sometimes the most irrational thought can masquerade itself as the most perfect logical cognition in the world...