The authors compared 84 Finnish psychiatric patients with suicide ideation with 166 randomly selected nonsuicidal patients in community-based psychiatric services. Patients with suicide ideation felt a need for psychiatric treatment more often than nonsuicidal patients. They were also more likely to receive antidepressnt medication & weekly therapy sessions were more common among them. A wish to change therapist, hopeless future orientation, severe depression, & dysthymia were the factors most strongly associated with suicide ideation in multivariate analysis. To help prevent suicidality among psychiatric patients special attention to therapy factors is needed. (51 refs.)