I think I have a reasonable amount of distance, not being in the same situation, but I would probably do the same thing (albeit with different timing), and I would consider it: 1) the rational decision; and 2) the fault of the U.S. federal government, and indirectly the American public for its fetish for jailing people. I don't have any interest in spending decades in prison, and I would commit suicide to avoid it, if I did not think there was another way of avoiding it. And I think that would be a rational decision, at least for my own personal utility function. So I wasn't at all surprised when I saw this news, though I was saddened: I would've given it about 1/3 each odds if you asked me in 2011, whether somehow charges would be dismissed/reduced, whether he'd commit suicide, or whether he'd end up as a hacker cause célèbre in prison. I do agree that we don't know with any degree of certainty what Swartz's own reasons were.

I think it's tricky to appeal to the irrational pessimism of depression without actual evidence that, in a given case, it was irrational. Depression can trick you into incorrectly thinking that a situation has no way out, but that's only relevant if, viewed rationally by someone not suffering from depression, there actually is a way out. In that case, treatment can solve the problem. But treatment can only dispel pseudo-dead-ends where the "depression was speaking", so to speak, which weren't really dead ends; it can't manufacture a way out of actual dead ends, like impending lengthy imprisonment.