The author presents the history of the research made on suicide notes from the end of the 19th century. The suicide notes seem to be very important documents of the presuicidal processes, manifesting in the “Presuicidal syndrome” or in the well known phenomenon of the “Cry for help”. The transcultural research which was done on the suicidal notes reflects some interesting correlation between the presuicidal processes and the content or structure of the suicide notes.The Hungarian authors confirmed the significant connection between the frequency of the negation in the suicide notes and the suicidal intent. It seems that the negation is more reliable sign of the suicidality than the direct expression of the suicide intent.
The author presents the research findings on formal structure of the Slovenian suicide notes and the leave-taking notes, written by the hostages, executed at the time of W. W. II. He compares the semantic, syntactic and pragma-linguistical aspects of the both samples and especially focuses on the use and the sense of the negation.
The author also tries to answer, what is the reason of writing suicide notes.