Suicide note

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title: "Suicide note" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["letters-(message)", "last-words", "suicide", "symptoms-and-signs-of-mental-disorders"] description: "Message left by a person intending to die" topic_path: "general/letters-message" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_note" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Message left by a person intending to die ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Lettre_de_Dalida.png" caption="Life is unbearable for me. Forgive me.}}) – [[Dalida]]'s suicide note"] ::

A suicide note or death note is a message written by a person who intends to die by suicide, often intended to be read afterwards.

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, psychiatry and graphology, 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 offense.

Sometimes there is also a message in the case of murder–suicide, 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

References

1. (April 2005). "Incidence of note-leaving remains constant despite increasing suicide rates". Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
2. Olson, Lenora. (2005). "The Use of Suicide Notes as an Aid for Understanding Motive in Completed Suicides". University of Utah.
3. (1971-07-14). "Suicide note reveals murder confession". bbc.co.uk.
4. (2008-03-01). "Man jailed for murder in lay-by". bbc.co.uk.
5. (2000-06-23). "Suicide note found in murder-suicide case". cbc.ca.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::