Morbid grammar question: Suicide thoughts, or suicidal thoughts?
March 16, 2018 9:28 AM   Subscribe

My job requires all of my coworkers and I to frequently ask if callers to a crisis line are suicidal or homicidal. I always say "are you having suicidal thoughts?", but some people say "are you having suicide thoughts?". Is "suicide thoughts" grammatically correct? I don't think it is, and Google doesn't help. I don't go around correcting people, but my one coworker always says SUICIDE THOUGHTS super loudly because he knows it irks me. Help us settle this once and for all! TIA.
posted by ShadePlant to Writing & Language (27 answers total)
 
"Thoughts of suicide" or "suicidal thoughts" would be correct. "Suicide thoughts" is kind of word soup.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:31 AM on March 16, 2018 [8 favorites]


Best answer: Thoughts is a noun. Suicidal is a modifier so it should be an adjective, suicidal. You could say thoughts of suicide and be grammatically correct.
posted by theora55 at 9:33 AM on March 16, 2018 [17 favorites]


"Suicide thoughts" strikes me as valid if nonstandard but what really trips me out here is somebody talking to people on a crisis line modulating their tone/volume for the purpose of needling their coworkers who can overhear them. What the hell.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:33 AM on March 16, 2018 [53 favorites]


my one coworker always says SUICIDE THOUGHTS super loudly because he knows it irks me

i feel like this level of pettiness reflects a temperament i would not want a person operating a crisis line to possess, jfc

to answer your question, i'm not a mental health professional but i've been around a while and i've literally never heard or seen the phrase 'suicide thoughts' prior to now
posted by halation at 9:33 AM on March 16, 2018 [31 favorites]


I agree that coworker always says SUICIDE THOUGHTS super loudly because he knows it irks me is intrinsically jerk-y behavior. Coworker may want to consider 1. staying focused on the caller and 2. growing up.
posted by theora55 at 9:35 AM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Co-worker is wrong about the grammar and also a gross person.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:45 AM on March 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm a therapist who works with clients with severe symptoms of mental illness and I do suicide assessments regularly. Everyone here uses "suicidal thoughts" or (more commonly in documentation) "suicidal ideation." If I were on a crisis line, or when I'm talking to clients, I try to use whatever terminology they use.

And yes, you may want to let your supervisor know that your co-worker is exploiting vulnerable people for the sake of his ego.
posted by lazuli at 9:46 AM on March 16, 2018 [10 favorites]


Best answer: Saying "I'm having suicide thoughts" is like saying "I'm having happiness thoughts" instead of "happy thoughts", or "I'm having anxiety thoughts" instead of "anxious thoughts". It's still possible to understand it, just because there's only so many things you could possibly mean by it, but it's not correct.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:47 AM on March 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm a professional copy editor, so I know my grammar. Also, I edit fiction so I'm quite concerned with how people actually talk/think, because we don't all speak/think in perfectly grammatical ways. So I'd put "suicide thoughts" firmly in the category of colloquial irregularity, meaning it may not be grammatically correct, but we all totally understand its meaning.

And there's definitely an argument to be made that "suicide thoughts" is an entirely excellent way to present this topic to the client on the phone, who may be agitated or depressed or...on the verge of suicide. Let this one go, please.
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:49 AM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Response by poster: To clarify, this is not a malicious inquiry. I just want to know for myself. I never, ever correct client language. I just bicker about it with my one coworker.
posted by ShadePlant at 9:53 AM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Suicide thoughts" is a noun followed by another noun, with the first modifying the second. It's as grammatical as "bacon bits" or "school shootings" or "dog days."

It's also not the way people usually word the idea of suicidal ideation, and consequently sounds weird.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 9:55 AM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think that "thoughts of suicide" is the way I've most often heard this phrased to clients. Or, "Are you having any thoughts of hurting or killing yourself?"
posted by lazuli at 9:56 AM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


I firmly believe that even noble people who help the at-risk are entitled to hate their dumbass co-workers.

If you really want to rankle the "loudly says 'suicide thoughts'" idiot, consider finding as many opportunities to create awkward noun-where-an-adjective-should-be+noun phrases as possible.

I had a co-worker who insisted on saying "orientate" (yes, I know it's allowed, but c'mon) and I managed to turn that one around by asking things like "So, what are you going to presentate at the meeting today?" I also found uses for organizate, ornamentate, perspirate, preparate, preservate, provocate, publicate, qualificate, realizate, recitate... I may be a terrible petty person, but I did shut that shit down so I didn't have to hear it anymore.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:59 AM on March 16, 2018 [15 favorites]


If your coworker regularly YELLS that one phrase when talking to a vulnerable population seeking assistance, I hope your supervisor is made aware and coworker is disciplined and put through retraining.
posted by jbenben at 10:16 AM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Best answer: It's true that suicide and thoughts are both nouns, and we have a perfectly handy adjective, suicidal, which we can use to modify thoughts. It's also true that in English we can use a noun to modify another noun as Spathe Cadet pointed out. The reason suicide thoughts is wrong isn't because it's a noun modifying a noun. It's wrong because for this combination of words, English speakers usually say suicidal thoughts and there is no advantage to changing to suicide thoughts. I suppose one could argue it's one syllable shorter, but I don't think that will be enough to turn the tide of normative usage.

I'm an editor, if that makes a difference, though IANYE.

Now I need to get back to that plate of beans, er, manuscript.
posted by tuesdayschild at 10:20 AM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


Just because suicide is a noun doesn't mean it can't occasionally morph into an adjective without being incorrect, even if "suicidal" exists. Nouns turn into adjectives pretty often once you start noticing them. For example: "I'm having a fun day, because I'm drinking grapefruit juice, while taking a mud bath, to stave off my suicide thoughts. Later, will clean off the mud with paper towels, and I'll put them in the garbage can."
posted by beagle at 10:20 AM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Best answer: You can use a noun as an adjective in the English language, and in some cases it's more clear. Are you a lake swimmer or an ocean swimmer? If I asked you if you were an "oceanic" or "lacustrine" swimmer, even assuming you didn't have to look up the word "lacustrine" like I did just now, it's definitely the weirder way of asking.

"Suicidal thoughts" are thoughts that are either related to suicide and/or are likely to lead to suicide. "Suicide thoughts" are specifically and only thoughts of suicide, which are certainly also 'suicidal' in the meaning that they are related to suicide, but possibly not 'suicidal' in the meaning that they are likely to lead to suicide (one can imagine suicide without being in a mental state that might lead them to commit the acts they are imagining). It's so fine a distinction as to be really, really unimportant compared to the topic under discussion, and it's probably not a distinction the speaker is even intentionally making, but it's not necessarily wrong, just different.
posted by solotoro at 10:37 AM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


As others have pointed out, you're witnessing a common evolutionary pattern in the English language. Whether your coworker is right or not may depend on whether we're all saying "suicide thoughts" in 20 years or not.

I'd be curious to know what the reaction on the other end of the line is. I would probably be at least momentarily distracted from my suicidal thoughts by the weird/bad grammar.
posted by clawsoon at 10:48 AM on March 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


“Suicide thoughts” sounds like a way of saying “thoughts about suicide in general as a concept”. I think most people don’t parse English that precisely but I’d think on this situation you’d want to err on the side of utmost clarity. This construction seems unnecessarily ambiguous.
posted by bleep at 11:53 AM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sometimes an adjectival form is the same as a noun form, but that will only sound ok to native English speakers if no separate adjectival form exists. There is no baconal bits or oceanal swimming possible. Maybe in one hundred years, people will say suicide thoughts, but most people now will hear it as wrong. That is why it’s currently incorrect, not because there’s some great grammar god in the sky.

Note also that we say suicide hotline, but not suicidal hotline, which would sound funny to most people. So we do use suicide in an adjectival form, but it doesn’t mean the same as suicidal.
posted by FencingGal at 11:55 AM on March 16, 2018 [6 favorites]


The funny thing is that "suicide" totally is used in an adjectival way already because we have the "Suicide Squad" and "suicide doors" and the Japanese "suicide forest". In these forms, however, "suicide" doesn't always mean the same thing as "suicidal" -- a "suicide door" isn't one that is considering killing itself, it's a door that is so dangerous that using it is likened to a way to commit suicide. The suicide forest isn't a bunch of depressed trees, it's a place where people commit suicide. etc. I agree with tuesdayschild that using "suicide" instead of "suicidal" sounds weird because the word "suicidal" is both more specific (thinking of committing suicide rather than just generally related to suicide) and much more commonly used as an adjective than "suicide" is.
posted by phoenixy at 1:35 PM on March 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


"Suicidal thoughts" are thoughts of killing oneself. "Suicide thoughts" includes pondering other people who have committed suicide in the past and possibly other topics, like common methods of suicide, or percentage of teen suicide attempts, and so on.

You want to know if the callers are having suicidal thoughts. If they are having suicide thoughts, that's likely relevant, because obsessing over suicide in any form can be a warning sign, but it doesn't directly mean "person is contemplating self-harm."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:37 PM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]


> I'm a professional copy editor, so I know my grammar.

Sorry, but this is not true. As a professional copyeditor, you know the rules of copyediting and the relevant style guides used in the profession. Grammar is something different; it's the way a language is used by its speakers, and it is studied by linguists. As a professional copyeditor with a master's degree in linguistics, I'm in a good position to point out that while as a copyeditor I might query the phrase in question (in a document intended for publication) as unusual usage, there is (as others have said) absolutely nothing ungrammatical, unusual, or new about using a noun modifier (see what I did there?). It's just not common in this phrase. (Up to now, at any rate, as clawsoon says!)
posted by languagehat at 5:42 PM on March 16, 2018 [7 favorites]


Ask your friend to consider this thought experiment:
Suicidal Squad
Suicidal Doors

The -al changes the meaning, yes? Who knows why but it does.
posted by bleep at 11:23 PM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Belatedly it occurs to me that services similar to where you work are often referred to as "Suicide Hotlines". Certainly not "Suicidal Hotlines." [Edit: after posting I see this has been mentioned already, sorry.]
posted by beagle at 10:55 AM on March 18, 2018


Hello, fellow crisis line worker! My circumstances don't require that I ask about suicide/homicide. When I do, I can weave it into the conversation and use language (that I consider to be) simpler and more direct. This means I can circumvent the suicidal thoughts question by saying something like, "Have you been/are you thinking about killing yourself or someone else?" Phrasing this as a reflective statement works for me, but I don't know if that suits your role. FWIW, as someone who trains my team, I would gently ask why if someone used "suicide thoughts" instead of "suicidal."
posted by handle in the wind at 3:31 AM on March 19, 2018


Forgot to add my rationale: sure, people will likely get the gist of "suicide thoughts." But why bother with the possibility of throwing them for a loop or having to interpret that statement? My team doesn't operate in a clinical role and we discourage formal/clinical language unless a caller is already using it, so there's that.
posted by handle in the wind at 3:42 AM on March 19, 2018


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