Suicide notes in India: what do they tell us?

Over 100,000 people commit suicide each year in India; yet, there has been limited micro-based study. This study marks the first study of suicide notes in India. The sample consisted of all available note-writers (n = 50), with a comparative sample of non-note writers (n = 50) of all suicides (n = 320, 16.47% of all postmortems) during a 1(1/2) year period in the New Delhi area, India. Using the demographic (descriptive) schema of Ho, Yip, Chiu, and Halliday (1998), the results show that note writers do not differ greatly from other suicides. Males wrote more notes, but the more intriguing finding is the fact that suicide in India is associated to an array of psychiatric/psychological and social factors.