What constitutes suicidal ideation?

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Suppose that a person thinks about death, from a philosophical perspective, and no more than he thinks about other mysteries.

Suppose that a person thinks about hanging himself from a tree, because he wonders how people would react if he killed himself, but no more than he thinks about marrying, having kids, and being happy the rest of his life.

Suppose that a person thinks about slashing his wrists, but understands that, as far as he knows, he wouldn't do it, and realizes that he is simply exercising his right to think whatever he wants, however crazy his thoughts might be.

Suppose that a person is hopeless and frustrated and honestly plans to put an end to his life, but hasn't come up with any plan to do it.

Suppose that a person is disturbed and thinks he wouldn't mind dying, and engages in dangerous behavior, such as crossing streets carelessly and without checking if there is oncoming traffic.

According to the field of psychology, are all these persons suicidal?

First example - Just thinking about death doesn't mean you are suicidal, but you might be depressed depending on your reasons for thinking about it.
Second example - It's suicide ideation (aka just thinking about it) & this person would need help before they start getting urges to hurt themselves.
Third example - I'd say this person also needs help if they are thinking about suicide as a way to control their own rights.
Fourth example - This person is definitely suicidal.
Fifth example - I'm not sure what the difference is between being suicidal & not caring about what happens to you, so I couldn't say.

Keep in mind, this is just my opinion.

Those are all examples of suicidal ideation (SI). You see, suicidal ideation simply means "suicidal ideas." However, you can have SI and not be suicidal. You would need a plan also to be considered to be a suicidal person. You would also need to be unable to promise not to carry it out. You would then need to be hospitalized.

But in the case of #1, if you think about death, as I said, from a philosophical perspective, just like every single thinking human being does at some point or another, but without feeling any dread or anxiety, and not necessarily because you want to put an end to some problem, if you think about death and just accept it as an inevitable fact of life, and again, you feel nothing whatsoever, how can that be considered suicidal ideation?

If the person thinks about death resulting from a course of action(s) that are intentional, then yes it would be still classified as a suicidal ideation. If the person thinks about death from suicide, but does not include the course of actions leading up to the death, it still would be suicidal ideation because you've already labelled that death as suicide. If one is thinking about the act of dying without any cause, then that would be just death ideation.

I would only consider the fourth one to be intrinsically suicidal. I think about the first three sometimes but I have never wanted to kill myself and highly doubt that I ever will want to, barring some kind of ridiculously disastrous future mistake. But I guess that some people who think about the first 3 could become suicidal.
The last one, hmm.. I'm not sure. I think that one could be suicidal, depending.. like, if the person became curious about what it was like to jump off a building, and since they didn't care about themself, they would consider jumping out of curiosity. That's technically suicidal.

What I want to know is in regards to this question: "Have you ever seriously considered killing yourself?" Do the first 3 count towards that? If I've imagined killing myself at length and in detail, but never intended to do it, have I still "seriously considered" it?

Also, what about suicide/killing in dreams? Does subconsciously "considering" count too?

It's hard to tell because the difference between "seriously" considering suicide and "not seriously" considering suicide varies depending on the person asking the question. You should ask the person asking the question to clarify, but I imagine that "seriously" considering suicide means being on the verge of committing suicide.

It's usually in some kind of online quiz or poll. :B
But if I get the chance, I'll ask.

I'd say it depends if the idea is appealing. Suicidal ideation seems to be defined as the desire to commit suicide, regardless of how frequently or how 'seriously' or in how much detail, or that's what I've understood from Googling.*

If you think about suicide in a philosophical sort of way, then I'd say it's not suicidal ideation. The same if you think about it in 'what if?' sort of way, the same way you might think 'what if I suddenly moved to a foreign country where I couldn't speak the language?' or 'what if I had superpowers?' So 1-2 might not be (but might be if they are thinking it's a nice idea, that no one would care, that it would be a good thing to do, stuff like that), while 4 definately is, and I'd say 5 probably is although I'm not sure 'suicidal ideation' is the correct clinical term for it. I know it's common in manic people.

*It's quite interesting I don't know the exact definition. I probably did at one point, as suicide was actually one of my 'special interests'/obesssions. Relevent to the discussion, for much of this long time that I had a fascination or even obession with suicide, I had no desire to kill myself.

So let's say that a person is thinking about suicide in a very graphic manner, but don't find the actualization appealing or desirable. Why would this person think about suicide in the first place? In most instances it would be out of curiosity, especially if this is related to philosophical thinking. Now, curiosity is defined as "A strong desire to know or learn something". So the curiosity of suicide could be defined as "A strong desire to know or learn death from killing oneself".

From your definition, we can debate this as "desire to know" vs "desire to do" and how this constitutes as suicidal ideation. If we go by the definition of suicidal ideation by dictionary it could be defined as "the formation of ideas or concepts involving suicide". So wouldn't curiosity ( desire to know ) be contained within this definition the same as actualization ( desire to do ) and as well as contemplation?

curiosity -> contemplation -> actualization

I wouldn't say curiousity about suicide is "a desire to know or learn death from killing oneself". It is a desire to know or learn about death (or just suicide specifically) by imagining killing oneself. One can't learn anything from actually killing oneself - you don't know anything when you're dead. Although I suppose that depends on one's beliefs.
Also, thinking about suicide is not thinking about killing oneself in all cases. When I had a fascination with suicide, I did a lot of thinking and reading about people who had killed themselves, but I didn't always imagine what it would have been like to be them.

I'm a bit confused as to the definition. Some websites say suicidal ideation is the intent to commit suicide or the consideration of it, some say it is the desire to commit suicide (this is not necessarily intent or consideration - one could think "I would kill myself if I didn't have a family who would miss me"), some say it is just thoughts about suicide. However, the first two definitions seem more common on websites, and these make more sense to me as they are probably more significant in psychiatry as a measure of how ill someone is and how much risk they are in, and 'suicidal ideation' is a psychiatric term.

Thats the clearest explanation that I have heard and understood on this topic. Thank you.

Definition from dictionary:

Curiosity - a strong desire to know or learn something.

Suicide - the action of killing oneself intentionally.

Death - the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism

So your subjective definition outweighs the standard?



Curiosity doesn't mean actualization. Through extensive conditional ( what if? ) simulations you can come to learn and understand a lot about suicide. For example:

-What information can be achieved through the process of suicide depending on method and execution.

-Finding what motives you would have for considering suicide.

-How this would effect your personal life, family members, partner, friends, work, businesses, environmental, political, religious, etc if one was to succeed or fail an attempted suicide.

-What type of impact it would have on future generations depending on how influential of a person you are.

-Exercising reason for life and death.

-Understanding other's who are suicidal.

-Why a self-termination process is embedded in our brain functions.

-Measuring one's mental endurance.

-etc, etc.



This reflects back to the topic of "Does the desire to know constitute suicidal ideation"? One can argue that your fascination with suicide and reading about people who have committed the act would have reinforced the concept in your mind. The fact that you "didn't always" imagine what it would be like, meaning that there were instances where you applied this knowledge gained to re-perceive the act as the subject. Every instance in the future would be influenced by this.

Example: You read about a person who committed suicide from suffocation by a bag full of helium over their head. You ask yourself how this method is different from others? Is it less painful? Why wouldn't they use a more conventional method? etc. These thoughts are reinforced in the self-termination concept in your mind. Anytime you think about suicide from now on, the collected information will affect how you think about it.

There is also the idea that the subject ( as in person ) of suicide always refers to the subject itself who is thinking it. Whether they are thinking about the experiences of another person or not. This being that there is always a constant comparison of one's own experiences to another's.

No, you misunderstand. The 'flaw' I find in that sentence is the last bit, 'from killing oneself'. Because that suggests the person is actually going to kill themselves. A curiosity about suicide is a desire to know or learn death, just not by killing oneself.

I still think that reading about someone elses suicide, and thinking about that, is different from picturing ones own suicide, or having the intent or desire to commit suicide. I read the newspaper the other day and read that a man wouldn't sell cigarettes to some teenagers because they were too young, so they threw a rock at his head, seriously injuring him. I tried to think about why they may have thrown a rock at his head, if they feel it was justified or if they feel guilty now. But this is very different from thinking that I'd like to throw a rock at anyone's head; I wouldn't want to do this at all. I just have a curiosity about others behaviour.