Community screening for depression and diagnostic assessment of persons in high-risk groups are important components of suicide prevention efforts (Gaynes et al 2004). Our results indicate that it is also important for clinicians to screen patients with schizophrenia for accompanying depressive symptoms. However, many screening schedules for depression (such as the PHQ2; Gilbody et al 2007) use ‘skip-outs’ so that if the subject does not report depression or anhedonia other depressive symptoms that may be predictive of suicide such as thoughts of death, may go undetected.