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In this article, we present certain aspects of a research project carried out over a four-year period, whose aim, from a psychoanalytical perspective, was to study the psychic functioning of adolescents having attempted suicide. Our population consisted of 17 adolescents (15 girls and 2 boys) between 13 and 17 years of age. The preferential technique used by these adolescents was drug intoxication. They most often attributed their suicide attempt to a recent separation from a highly invested person, a dispute with a family member or a generalized feeling of malaise. On the basis of clinical material that we gathered from projective tests and clinical interviews with the adolescents, we attempt to illustrate the relation between the suicidal gesture at adolescence and the management of depressive movements. The suicidal gesture at adolescence is often the direct result of a massive and overwhelming depressive process. However, our study tended to show that the suicidal gesture participated, in some cases, in a defence strategy struggling with the depressive movement, by revealing, on the contrary, the impossible access to a depressive experience.