The authors argue that perhaps suicidal ideation should not be the focus of prevention activities, using these 4 reasons: 1) suicidal ideation is a common symptom therefore it may be a mistake to think that ideation may evolve to suicidal behaviours; 2) it may or may not be true that ideation precedes or accompanies suicidal behaviour; 3) preconditions for ideation may be qualitatively different than those for suicidal behaviour; & 4) ideation may represent no more than 1 of many risk factors.