Many junior doctors, some with only undergraduate training, will this August feel at the pointed end of psychiatry when they are asked to see an ‘overdose’. The referral letter is unlikely to be more specific concerning what service they are to render to the patient or the referring physician. In the psychiatric textbooks the tyro will find a wealth of actuarial data but little clinical advice. After four years as a junior psychiatrist I present a personal philosophy of what one is doing when one assesses the survivor of a (para) suicidal act.