I'm not gonna call it mental illness, or even despair. The real reason people do it is hard to define, and it's naive to assume it's always irrational. But if his primary goal was political, he knew very well that there were many, far more effective ways to make that political point. Of course he cared about the war, but that element was a part of the "how", and the "how" is the happy side. The how is the self-indulgent part that we relish as a distraction from the "what."

I can only speak from my own experience, but I do have some. There was a suicide in my household when I was young. I've tried to make sense of it ever since. And for my whole adult life I've suffered from the same depression that caused it in him. I'm not medicated (yet), because fuck that (for now), and I'm too aspie for therapy. I'm doing fine, muddling through, no immediate danger. But I have extensive "how" thoughts on about a weekly basis. They almost always include a political element. They're cheap, they're easy, they're retcons on a much deeper and more mysterious story. If I were to go through with it (and again, I don't plan to!), I'd try damn hard to make people think I had a specific reason. I'd be trying to fool them, and I'd be fooling myself.