This article discusses how the Òrisk factorsÓ for suicide are filled with false positives & negatives as to be nearly valueless in anticipating & preventing suicide in actual clinical practice. Suicide is no more or less likely in the few patients who attempt self-harm than in the many who make no such attempts. Finally, it is difficult to distinguish retrospectively the quality of the psychiatric care to patients who attempt or die by suicide from that received by those who do not. (16 refs)