TY - JOUR PY - 1990// TI - What characteristics of suicide notes are salient for people to allow perception of a suicide note as genuine? JO - Death studies A1 - Leenaars, Antoon a. A1 - Lester, David SP - 25 EP - 30 VL - 14 IS - 1 N2 - A recent study by Lester and Leenaars (1) indicated that some genuine suicide notes are more consistently construed as genuine than others. This study attempts to isolate what characteristics of suicide notes allow people to perceive a suicide note as genuine. We compared a sample of more and less obvious notes on the basis of eight patterns: unbearable pain, interpersonal relations, rejection-aggression, inability to adjust, indirect expressions, identification-egression, ego, and cognitive constriction. We found no differences on these patterns; only two specific (protocol) items distinguished the sets. The "obvious" suicide notes expressed a greater stimulus-bound focus and a greater limitation of thought. These results suggest that future research should be more phenomenological in nature.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0748-1187 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07481189008252343 ID - ref1 ER -