There is much confusion in the literature on suicide and suicide risk. They confuse who and why. It is not uncommon to see some say that depression causes suicide. This is not so.
Depression does not tell us why a person may suicide, but who (might) suicide. I came across this from a piece of recent research.
As you can see the highest risk group are males with severe depression and the risks can be as high as 25% of them. This may suggest to some that depression causes suicide, but it also means that 75% of males with severe depression don’t suicide. If depression caused suicide how can that be?
My first article on suicide provides and explanation for how this can be
Which is followed up by the second
Depression does not cause suicide. However Transactional Analysis can provide a clear theoretical explanation of why one depressed person can be suicidal and another is not even thinking about it.