Introduction: Suicidal presentations in Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) represent a challenging clinical condition as well as a unique psychiatric emergency in terms of severity, risk factors, and it is the only psychiatric emergency with an acute death risk.The present work tries to confirm the differential characteristics of suicidal presentations compared with general psychiatric emergencies.Methods: Information was collected from 914 consecutive patients attended in the PES of a General Hospital (45.4% men and 55.6% women) of whom 168 (18.4%) were admitted to the PES due to suicidal behaviours.Data included sociodemographic, clinical and derivation/discharge variables.Bivariate analyses were conducted by using t tests and chi square tests.Odds ratios (ORs) were calculated to summarize the magnitude of the association Statistical significance was set at p<0.01.Results: There were no differences in sex distributions between suicidal and general presentations.Mean age of the suicidal sample was lower than general patients (34.71 vs.41.11 y.o.; p<0.01).There were no differences in sociodemographic variables such as educational level or employment status between suicidal and general patients.Suicidal patients were more unlikely (p<0.01) to seek for assistance prior to the emergency than general patients (OR=2.701 Cl 95%=1.769-4.123).Suicidal patients showed a higher risk (p<0.01) of substance abuse (OR=1.658; Cl 95%=1.173-2.342) but there were no differences in tobacco consumption.Previous suicide attempts were associated with suicidal presentations (p<0.01) with the highest Odds ratio (OR=5.374 Cl 95%=3.742-7.719).There were no differences in the mean number of previous psychiatric admissions between suicidal and general patients as well as in admission rates after the current emergency.There were differences in ICD-10 diagnoses (p<0.01) distribution with a higher prevalence of personality disorders in the suicidal sample (20.2% vs.11.2%) and a lower prevalence of psychotic disorders (6.1% vs.18.1%).There were no differences in affective diagnoses or substance abuse disorders.Discussion: Our results confirm the presence of a different clinical/sociodemographic profile of suicide attempters compared with general psychiatric emergencies.Suicidal patients are younger, show substance abuse more often and have a higher prevalence of personality disorders.Another interesting issue is the fact that suicidal patients do not seek for medical attention prior to the attempt, thus making more difficult the prevention of this type of behaviours.