It's not always easy to tell how suicidal you are a given time, and if there is still a part of you that wants to live, you need to be able to know when you can safely ignore your suicidal thoughts and when you need to start telling people you're in trouble and need to go to the hospital. A sure sign that things are really bad is thinking in detail about the method of killing yourself, going through the steps in your head and planning them. Another really bad sign is when you decide when to kill yourself. If someone says "I want to kill myself," they need help, but if they say "I am planning to kill myself on Wednesday afternoon at 4 using the gun I just bought," they probably need to be locked up.