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I am no expert on the spiritual implications of suicide, but I do have some education and experience on the subject of mental health.
"Mental illness" is a very broad term. To say that something did or did not happen because a person was mentally ill is not much better than saying, "the cause of death was physical illness." Depression is a mental illness, and depressed people are generally quite rational and able to make and carry out complex plans to kill themselves, if they are suicidal.
There are many reasons why someone might kill themselves. Not all suicides are depressed. Some are in physical pain, some are in emotional pain, some are mentally ill -- any blanket statement like "people who kill themselves are selfish" or "people who kill themselves are cowards is likely to be wrong more than it is right.
It is a common misconception that people who talk about suicide are not really going to go through with it. Sure, there are people who talk about it as a cry for help, or even to get attention, or to make others feel guilty, or probably for other reasons. But people who commit suicide usually have talked about it before hand, with someone. If someone tells you they are thinking of suicide, a good question to ask is, "Have you thought about how you would do it? Do you have a plan?" That might seem a little odd, but people who have already planned how they will go about killing themselves are likely to be serious about it.
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