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Kayla Steele, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist, UNSW Sydney

What’s the difference between intrusive thoughts and suicidal thoughts?

Suicide OCD Lifeline
Liza Summer/Pexels

We have thousands of spontaneous thoughts a day. Most of them are mundane, such as “Where did I leave my car keys?”

But every now and then a strange and distressing thought might pop into our mind, such as “What if I hurt myself or someone I care about?”

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