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A suicide note or death note is a message left behind before a person has committed suicide, or who intends to commit suicide.
It is estimated that 25–30% of suicides are accompanied by a note. According to Gelder, Mayou and Geddes (2005) one in six leaves a suicide note. The content can be a plea for absolution or blaming family and friends for life's failings. However, incidence rates may depend on ethnicity, method of suicide, and cultural differences, and may reach rates as high as 50% in certain demographics. A suicide message can be 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 commit suicide leave a note.
According to Lenora Olsen, the most common reasons that people contemplating suicide choose to write a suicide note include one or more of the following:
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.