Authors' reply

We agree with Dr El-Adl's comment that both ethnicity and religion may influence the incidence of, and recovery from, suicidal thoughts. Data on ethnicity were collected in the Office for National Statistics Survey that formed the basis of our paper (Singleton et al, 2001). Because of the relatively small sample size, only 122 (5.1%) of the individuals who reported ethnicity were from a Black or minority ethnic group and only seven of these experienced incident suicidal thoughts. Thus, specific investigation of the impact of belonging to a particular ethnic group was not possible. If the Black and minority groups are combined to give a single group, the odds ratio for incident suicidal thoughts in this group compared with the White group in analyses adjusted for age, gender and score on the Clinical Interview Schedule – Revised is 0.77 (95% CI 0.27–2.17). The breadth of the confidence interval indicates that the data are compatible with either a threefold reduction or a doubling in risk. Data on religion were not collected in the Office for National Statistics Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity.