The most disastrous complication for a psychiatric team occurs when the patient commits suicide. The reactions of the personnel involved with the patient are similar to the reactions of the bereaved: denial, guilt and shame, aggression and accusation, relief. By psychological autopsy we mean a structured group meeting where all the factors leading up to the suicide are discussed and the reactions of the personnel ventilated. This is different from psychological debriefing, where the primary aim is to ventilate the reactions of the involved personnel without analyzing what went wrong. The article describes how psychological autopsy has been conducted for more than 15 years at the psychiatric ward in the Central Hospital in Stavanger, Norway.