Background: Risk assessment in childhood is challenging, in part due to limitations in children’s capacity to introspect, recall, and use language to describe internal states and suicide ideation (SI). Compared to adolescents, children are also less able to consider the lethality of a method, plan, and foresee the consequences of their actions, which are key elements in risk assessments developed for adults. Therefore, characterizing SI in childhood may require a holistic approach that incorporates non-verbal assessments. We used body mapping, a technique that combines non-verbal and verbal report, to identify shared expressions of distress children experience when they are thinking about suicide. Methods: Eight children of color (expected n=20 by 05/31), ages 10-12, recruited from an inpatient unit and interviewed within days of their admission for SA (n=3) or SI (n=5). Children completed the Child Suicide Ideation Interview, which included semi-structure questions about the content of their SI and body mapping. In the body mapping, children were asked to draw on a body silhouette their thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and social connections around the time of their SI and describe the drawing. Two raters coded the data from the body maps. We conducted cultural domain analysis (i.e., do the participants conceptualize elements within a given domain in the same way?) in Anthropac and cultural consensus analysis (i.e., what is the level of shared knowledge of a domain among all participants?) in R. Results: Fifty-four expressions of distress were identified. Cultural domain analysis revealed that shaking was reported by 62.5% of the children, followed by headache (37.5%), another five different body sensations (25% each), feelings (sad and mad, 25% each), and thoughts (SI, 25%). A Comrey ratio of 3.6 revealed adequate cultural consensus (i.e., ratio ? 3), supporting the existence of a shared model of expressions of distress in this sample. Discussion: Our preliminary findings indicate that body mapping is a feasible tool to assess expressions of distress in children who are thinking about suicide. Thoughts about suicide were reported by two children, indicating that other expressions were more salient in this sample, specifically body sensations (shaking, headache) and feelings (sad, mad). Information from body mapping could serve as a potential marker of risk that could be incorporated in risk assessments and safety plans with children.