Thinking about suicidal thinking

Suicide has emerged as a major cause of death from non-communicable disease worldwide, leading to a burgeoning interest in its prevention. Naturally, in this context one of the focuses of research and clinical interest is the presence of suicidal thinking—a potentially identifiable and reversible precursor of suicide—with much interest lately being in the relation between suicidal thinking and suicidal behaviour. In this Personal View we argue that, notwithstanding important and nuanced research into the nature of these phenomena, the field currently suffers from approaches to the terminology and reporting of suicidal thinking that pay insufficient regard to key features of its definition, and that these have clinical and research implications.