Surface and Latent Meanings in Male’s Suicide Notes: A Two-Legged Qualitative Study

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the phenomenon of suicide, which is a global health problem, by utilizing suicide notes. Our main concern in this article is to understand why a person leaves suicide notes before committing suicide; indeed, this question may shed light on particular personal characteristics of the note-leavers. 12 documents containing suicide notes, belonging to Turkish males, were obtained from Prosecutor office. By using an inductive and interpretative method, firstly, we conducted a semantic level analysis; and subsequently, we deeply analyzed the data by conducting latent level analyses from a Lacanian point of view. At the end of this cumulative process, we labelled the latent themes as ‘ambivalence of emotions’, ‘issues associated with separation’ and ‘issues associated with the Law’. Within the scope of those findings, a diagnostic discussion was provided. This discussion designated a picture of narcissism in addition to a psychotic structure, specifically paranoia.