Professor Kissane’s data in different patient cohorts shows how both “pointlessness” and “hopelessness” lead to suicidal thinking much more strongly than does clinical depression. Pointlessness – the loss of the value, purpose and meaning of life – is not a symptom taught about in medical school or psychiatry training: so it is not part of the medical lexicon. Yet it is as powerful as hopelessness in the loss of the will to live.