There is sometimes dissonance between the medical services that the general public expects an ED to provide and the acute critical care that emergency clinicians hope to provide. One explanation for this is that the ED is both a territory and a meeting place for a cornucopia of clinicians, some of whom are not ED clinicians themselves. Roles are sometimes ambiguous and location-specific. Recently, one Queensland mother believed that her son's suicide could have been prevented had emergency staff been better educated. This perspective aims to reflect on several pertinent questions: Should suicide risk be treated as a medical emergency? Is suicide prevention everyone's business? Is suicide risk assessment and management a core component of ED? How common, precise and non-stigmatising is the language around suicide? To what extent is that language underpinned by mythology rather than fact? For some, these will be inconvenient questions. How they are answered is undoubtedly framed within the language used when discussing suicide.