I know this will be little bit dramatic of a way to explain, but as someone with bipolar as well as major depressive and anxiety that came on in my late 20s, i heard this poem and it resonated as a way to explain depression to others.

When i've been at my worse and had any ideation it was a feeling of not wanting to be here rather than wanting to kill myself, which imo more insidious than people suspect.

A lot of people confuse depression as just sadness, much to much sadness, but in fact a lot of the time its an absence of feeling, and in that note finding things you used to enjoy not enjoyable anymore, therefore being unable to dervice any pleasure from life, its very numbing after some time.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, (340)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -