A suicide note or death note is a message written by a person who intends to die by

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

. A study examining Japanese suicide notes estimated that 25–30% of suicides are accompanied by a note. However, incidence rates may depend on ethnicity and cultural differences, and may reach rates as high as 50% in certain demographics. A suicide message can be in any form or medium, but the most common methods are by a written note, an audio message, or a video.

Reasons

Some fields of study, such as

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental disorder, mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, Mood (psychology), mood, emotion, and behavior. ...

and

graphology Graphology is the analysis of handwriting in an attempt to determine the writer's personality traits. Its methods and conclusions are not supported by scientific evidence, and as such it is considered to be a pseudoscience. Graphology has been ...

, have investigated the reasons why people who complete or attempt suicide leave a note. The most common reasons that people contemplating suicide choose to write a suicide note include one or more of the following: *To ease the pain of those known to the victim by attempting to dissipate guilt. *To increase the pain of survivors by attempting to create guilt. *To set out the reason(s) for suicide. *To send a message to the world. *To express thoughts and feelings that the person felt unable to express in life. *To give instructions for disposal of the remains. *Occasionally, to confess acts of murder or some other offence. Sometimes there is also a message in the case of

murder–suicide A murder–suicide is an act where an individual intentionally kills one or more people before killing themselves. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms: * Suicide after or during murder inflicted on others ** Suicide af ...

, explaining the reason(s) for the murder(s); see, for example, Marc Lépine's suicide statement and videotaped statements of the 7 July 2005 London bombers.

References

External links

''The Presentation of the Self in Suicide Notes''
by David Lester & Bijou Yang {{DEFAULTSORT:Suicide Note Letters (message) Last words

Note Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened versi ...

Symptoms and signs of mental disorders

Reasons

See also

References

External links