Objective To compare the clinical and social-psychological characteristics of patients with and without mental disorder.Methods Base the diagnosis of mental disorder,232 suicide attempters were divided into two groups:suicide attempter with mental disorder ( 105 cases) and suicide attempter without mental disorder (127 cases).The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-Ⅳ,the Strength of Suicide Ideation,Health Questionnaire of WHO,Questionnaire of Life Measure (QLM),Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI),Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS) and Buss Aggressiveness Scale (BAS),Social Support Rate Scale and Questionnaire of Coping Style (QCS) were conducted.Results The 105 suicide attempters with a mental disorder were older than the 127 suicide attempter without a mental disorder ( 37.9 ± 14.5 vs 32.9 ± 13.3,t =2.710,P =0.007 ),and the percentage of female was lower in the former than in the later(65.7％ vs 81.1％,x2 =7.099,P =0.008 ).In the total of 232 cases,female was more than male with the gender ratio of 2.87 ( female vs male).The strength level of suicide ideation was higher ( 7.1 ± 2.8 vs 4.8 ± 2.3,t =6.498,P =0.000).The scores of health questionnaire of WHO,BDI and BAI were higher in the suicide attempters with a mental disorder than those without a mental disorder,otherwise the scores of QLM,BIS and its three sub-scales were higher.Among QCS,the sub-score of Self-blaming was higher,and the sub-scores of Question solvation and Asking for help were lower.Conclusion There are distinguished differences on the sociodemographic and psychological characteristics among the suicide attempters with and without a mental disorder.Mental diseases play an important role in the development of suicide attempter with a mental disorder.