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Since the majority of patients with psychiatric disorders do not commit or even attempt suicide, it seems that while psychiatric disorder may be a necessary risk factor for suicide, it is not sufficient in itself. One of the most urgent issues for clinical research in the area of suicide is to determine what factors, in addition to and beyond psychiatric disorders, predispose a person to suicide. Three areas of research : Post-mortem psychological studies of adolescents from eighteen to twenty-one years of age who committed suicide while performing their military service in the Israeli army. Clinical work with suicidal adolescents in a full-time hospital ward for adolescents. Work in the emergency room of a large general hospital during an epidemiological study of conducts associated with suicide. Our hypothesis is that three groups of personality types form the basis for the tendency toward suicide : (1) personalities that are narcissistic, perfectionist, unable to tolerate failure and imperfection ; (2) those characterized by impulsiveness and aggression associated with extreme sensitivity to minor life events ; (3) those characterized by underlying depression, usually the consequence of a psychical affliction, such as mood disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia or mental anorexia. These results seem to reinforce the conclusions that we presented in earlier papers (Apter et al., 1995). We think that suicidal conduct in depressed adolescents differs from that of borderline adolescents. The well-known relationship between impulsiveness, aggression and suicidal tendencies (Apter et al., 1993) may indeed be linked to borderline state and conduct disorders (Apter et al., 1995). This has important consequences for research on adolescent suicide in general, since additional results regarding associated trauma, sexual abuse, family break-up, and drug use may also be linked to specific types of suicide. We can no longer view suicidal conduct as a homogenous set of conducts. Although the non-nosiographical approach developed by Van Praag et al. (1987) has been a very fruitful one, diagnosis and personality differences may play a role in the understanding of suicide.