I recently heard the following anecdote from a writer on suicide - or on people who had survived falls from great heights, can't remember which. Anyway, he had talked to a man who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. When asked what he had thought after he jumped, the man said, "The moment I was off the bridge, I had a sudden realization: there was not one thing wrong with my life that I couldn't fix, except for the fact that I had just jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge."

As for the "selfishness" of suicide, it undoubtedly often is the supremely selfish act - however, I think that often those who commit suicide are, at that point, so self-absorbed that they are incapable of conceiving of the effect their act will have on others. In the case of young people, I just don't think they have any idea of the depths of trauma their deaths will cause their parents in particular, even when part of their motivation is to hurt their parents. I think it is useful to get the idea of the "selfishness" of suicide out there, but when looking at actual cases, it is probably not only more charitable but more accurate to consider them the product of mental illness (with some exceptions, e.g., suicide of a person facing terminal disease).