Studying suicide notes, - last personal documents before a suicide act - as well as
investigation of media and internet texts on self-destruction (including contents,
"messages") can have a great significance. Individual and cultural valuations appear
in the way farewell notes, media letters and other personal documents present self-destruction.
These "messages", ideas about life, death and suicide are deeply embedded within the
public context of culture too. In the present content analysis formal, syntactic and
grammatical characteristic features, as well as speech patterns and verbal expressions
of selected notes, samples have been investigated. Suicidal - fatal (n=49) and nonfatal
group (n=31) of farewell letters were compared with the sample of a control group
(n=33). Results have been discussed, interpreted and concluded. These appear to be
useful and important not only in understanding of suicidal phenomenon and its psychodynamic
background in clinical work or in suicide hotlines, but also in prevention, social-,
and clinical intervention of self-destruction. The investigation of these new data
may provide a much broader perspective in understanding suicidal process.
