An estimated 1 million people worldwide die by suicide every year. Globally, suicide ranks among the three leading causes of death among those aged 15 to 44 years. Attempted suicides are up to 20 times more frequent than completed ones. In most cases the suicide event whether attempt or death, is unexpected and has a major impact on the individuals familiar with the victim and on the public opinion. As such society expects mental health practitioners to address it and reduce it like another pathological condition. In fact, the concern about suicide plays a major role in the daily clinical practice. Decision to hospitalize or not, medicate or not are all affected by the perceived risk for suicide. Research in the areas have designed and validated scales which assess risk for suicide and classify psychiatric patients into low and high risk for suicide. Unfortunately, at the individual patient level, our ability to predict the suicide event, even in individuals who score very high on such scales, has very low specificity, low sensitivity, and poor predictive value. Nevertheless, we continue to make decisions based on risk assessment. Furthermore, even if the predictive value would not be so poor, we do not have methods to prevent suicide at the personal level which are supported by good quality evidence. However. preventive measures at the population level such as education, easy availability of mental health support, reducing access to lethal means of suicide such as fire arms and limiting access to high bridges or other areas know to be used for suicide, appears to reduce the event rates. Therefore, society should invest efforts in population prevention rather than individual prediction and prevention.