What did Nietzsche mean by that?
For me, this saying resonates because I've found that when I think of suicide I feel better because it makes me think that after my death I won't have any more of the troubles that plague me in life. It'll be a relief. In a way, it's hope.
It also, I think, for a time gives me the feeling of control over my life.
The trick, though, is not to actually act on one's intention. I guess I'm pretty good at procrastinating, which has hurt me a lot in many other aspects of life, but it's good in this one sense.
Because of the views around suicide and how it can be seen as an "out" for issues that are actually only temporary, associating suicide with hope in any sense could be counterproductive. You have to make these people understand. Sometimes they never intend to understand, and only take the parts that validate their preexisting notions. Suicide and hope in the same statement.
The reason why I believe the “depressed people are just seeing the world as it really is” line of thinking is harmful is that it encourages people to believe that their depression is simply the result of their accurate world view, and that trying to change things in order to feel better would mean they have to fool themselves.
The emotional distance between "perfectly healthy and wonderful" is much much further than "I really could end it and it wouldn't be much difference".
At the worst points, looking at it from the bottom of the hole to just that little bit up, makes it bearable enough to eventually start something, and slowly work back up toward okay.
“They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.“