Serious depression w/o suicidality. Common in bipolar?

Ever since my first serious depression (age 12 -- and then more serious at age 15) I have associated serious depression with feeling suicidal. All but one of my six hospital admissions were for being actively suicidal, although I have never attempted. I have never been seriously depressed without also being seriously suicidal.

Until I started Lamictal. I still get depressed, and sometimes it's bad, but it's more a feeling of inertia, guilt, shame, staying in bed all day ruminating -- but never of wanting to die.

How many people here experience serious depression without feeling suicidal? Do you think this is the exception or is it common in bipolar disorder?

I don't know about others, rose, but I have plenty of depression without feeling suicidal. I have had plenty of those thoughts, but not every time during a depression.

I'm have never been sui, except for on meds and going directly from high to low. However, I can and do get a lot of SH thoughts that if I were to act on them would cause my death more in mixed states. If I'm depressed w/o meds I kinda just "go away" I curl up and stop responding to anything.

I've had serious depression w/o suicidal ideation. My worst episodes of course had those suicidal thoughts, but those thoughts are not always a "given" when I'm in a depressed state. (They have always been present when I'm in a mixed state though.) Sometimes I just have an overwhelming sense of shame, foolishness, despair, sadness, crying, inability to function or desire to interact with other people, etc. I imagine people who have a bipolar diagnosis have probably experienced both at one time or another.

Not every depression. But a lot. But when severely depressed, well, must be always, as I can't remember otherwise.
Also have the thoughts when not depressed. Might be weird, but there it is. But at such time, not "actively", as you put it. Good word. Downright dispassionately, really.
I don't know which is the more common, but I'm glad you are finding that not happening with your Lamictal, m_r8.

(Edited to add... Piper, good point. The mixed. Oh God, yes.)

I agree serious depression does not always have suicidal ideation, for me it's common for the two Togo hand in hand but that's just me.

I have wanted to go to sleep and not wake up but don't think about sui or self harm.

I've been actively suicidal only twice in my life---once when I'd just lost my newborn daughter, and the other this past March right after I was diagnosed with bipolar. The rest of the time when I'm depressed, it's passive......like it wouldn't bother me one bit if I were to go to sleep and not wake up, or get sick and die.

Luckily, the first time I wanted to kill myself there were no means available for me to do it; I was recovering from a C-section and could barely get out of bed. The last time, I was contemplating eating the rest of the Ativan in the pill bottle, but there wasn't enough to do the job; then for awhile I fantasized about crashing my car into the center divider on the freeway at 75 MPH. However, I didn't want to take anyone else out with me, and then I figured that I'd find a way to screw up the wreck by surviving and then winding up in a nursing home for the rest of my life with permanent injuries. Nope......my life sucked badly at the time, but it wasn't worth risking THAT. So here I am, to tell the tale.

but when I am suicide I've always to much of a vain perfectionist for the most "accurate" ways and worry about the trauma caused to the finder. And T thinks vanity and perfectionism is a bad thing.

I found most of my serious depression, I tend to think about suicide, I've attempted sucide three times in my life, and often thought about it, been hospitalized 5 times in 2 years, but as I got older I don't know but I've been more obsessed about my dog and the fact that I have a dog that I love so much, it just hurts me to think about kiling myself and leaving him behind, so in a way he is saving my life sometimes. I know that sounds crazy but it works for me.