Émile Durkheim Suicide Summary

Emile Durkheim was one of the most influential people to write about suicide and its causes. Suicide had previously been thought to be a moral and psychological problem whereas Durkheim related suicide to sociological problems in modern society. He believed and worked to prove that suicide was not related to individualism but linked to the effects of the external influences of modern society. External social influences upon an individual covered the broad and varied aspects such as culture, religion and family. Durkheim believed that suicide was directly related to the level of social integration and/or regulation of a person in society. He developed groups into which an individual was categorised according to their level of integration

Most of the depression and problems in the brain are based on sociological denial from peers and others. Teen suicide as described by Emile Durkheim’s studies is mainly a focus on the social denial and rejection an individual may encounter in life. Social rejection, sociological disasters and group dynamics are important aspects that lead to teenagers committing suicide. These sociological issues are some of the leading contributions towards teen suicide and

The first sociologist to theorize on suicide and its sociological interpretations was Emile Durkheim. Durkheim worked during the late 1800’s identifying social structures as the key determinant in self-destructive behaviour. In his work Suicide: A study in Sociology, Durkheim stated that “suicide rates increase when a society’s value system breaks down.”2 Durkheim believed that the shared values of a society and the mechanisms in place that ensure that its members adhere to these values, is interpreted as a person’s “social structure.” Durkheim suggested two basic factors in social structure that heavily influence the incidence of suicide. These are regulation and integration. He believed that an individual needs to become part of, and find direction in his own society. Without these factors in place, suicide becomes a common substitute. Teens are often anxious about fitting in to their society (especially among peer groups) so it is clear that integration is essential to adolescence. Durkheim also suggested that it is these two factors

Durkheim’s theories and work on suicide classified the phenomenon into four types; Egoistic, Altruistic, Anomic and Fatalistic (Ritzer Pg 200-202). Durkheim’s concept of social integration ties into egoistic suicide as it

Although no incidences of suicide were referenced in the article, this increased interaction could lead to an increase in both egoistic and altruistic suicide. Durkheim’s theory on anomic suicide states: “People are more likely to kill themselves when they do not know what is expected of them, when regulation is low, and they are largely free to run wild. This mad pursuit is likely to prove unsatisfying and, as a

Durkheim does not see egoism, altruism, anomie and fatalism as types of suicide, but types of social structure that highlight the presence or lack of integration and regulation. It must be stressed that this excess/lack of integration and regulation are not seen as direct causes of suicide, rather Durkheim sees a number of voluntary deaths in society as inevitable; integration and regulation are merely prophylactic to suicidal impulses, which when taken to excess or dramatically reduced, fail to act as a preventative, and so suicides occur. This clarification is an important strength of Durkheim’s theory: it allows the biography of the individuals who kill themselves to vary, while still explaining underlying pressures/lack of to explain their deaths, and the varying suicide rates between groups.

Finally, we have Fatalistic suicide, which occurs in societies with high levels of social regulation. This is only briefly discussed in Durkheim’s work, as he saw Fatalistic suicide, “as a rare phenomena in the real world.� (I1) An example might be someone with an overregulated and difficult life, like a slave.

In “Life on the Island”, Emily Esfahani Smith proposes that hyper individualism in a society leads to an increase of suicide. Smith uses many credible sources to support this claim. The strong evidence and analysis outweighs the few opposing viewpoints. The problem of increased suicide over the past years is addressed and analyzed by Smith. Smith’s argument is that hyper individualism in a society leads to an increase in suicide rates.

The book “sociology” by john J. Mioni, express about one of the sociologist who studied suicide, which is one of the topics that connect with one of my event in my life. When I read about Durkheim, I love one of the quotes, which made me think too much and I connected with my event because one of my event is about suicide, and I believe is truth what Durkheim thought and said about suicide. We have to love who we are, not matter what but the reality is that we don’t love ourselves enough. As a result, I consider that we think through suicide when we feel like we can’t escape our problems, depressed, and do not find some other solutions to our problems, and there come the suicidal thought, and the first thing that we want is die. Therefore,

Durkheim did not feel satisfied with individualized explanations for suicide such as alcoholism or depression. He felt there needed to be a stronger explanation and sought to explain how suicide was truly brought about through social forces. He constructed a coordinate system that contained social integration (how well you are connected with society) on the y-axis, and social regulation (what you expect daily from the world) on the x-axis. You need to maintain a position somewhere near the middle of the two to have a low risk for suicide. This graph led him to four different types of suicide. Egoistic suicide occurs when an individual is not very connected to society. Altruistic suicide is the opposite, where an individual is too integrated.

Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a purely individual decision but French sociologist Emile Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed in the influence of society on the individual and that if anything can explain that relation, it is suicide. His use of the data of suicide, not specific cases and reports, to study the societal trends reveals his true subject of study: society as a whole and its role in the individual experience. Durkheim uses the study of suicide via the quantitative methodological approach as a tool to study society as a broader whole.

“In a classic sociological study, Durkheim (1966) identifies four types of suicide: “altruistic” and “fatalistic” suicides which he associates with pre-modern, traditional community and “anomic” and “egoistic” suicides characteristic of modern society.” (Kuhling, 2004) The ideas of sociologist, Emile Durkheim have undoubtedly helped my understanding of suicide of contemporary society. Durkheim has aided me in understanding the complexity of this topical issue and made me more aware of the roots of suicide.

Durkheim’s view and understanding of suicide differs from that of psychologists on the grounds of reasons as to why people commit suicide. A psychologist would attribute a variety of internal reasons like unhappiness, feeling of lacking somewhere or that of decreasing self worth as reasons why a person commits suicide. Durkheim has a very different way of looking at a suicide. He believes that it is an outcome of the social context in which the individual dwells. He attributes social and societal reasons that are external to the individual but, still tend to have a profound impact on him/her. According to him, it is the surroundings of an individual that provoke him/her to commit suicide. Durkheim believed that the consistency of suicide rates was a social fact that was affected by the degree to which people were coordinated through forces of binding and togetherness in society. According to Durkheim, suicide is connected to each case of death which comes from a positive or negative act, carried out by a person, who has a realization that it will create this outcome and will bring an end to his/her life. Durkheim tries to find out social reasons for suicide (not individual or mental)

In the other side, According to Emile Durkheim he argued that suicide can be caused by social factors, not just individual psychological ones. Durkheim reasoned that social integration in particular is a factor. The more socially integrated a person is--connected to society and generally

Emile Durkheim identifies four broad types of suicide viz, egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic. Fatalistic is caused by excessive social regulation (blocked by passion), altruistic is not legitimately studied by Durkheim. Anomic type is caused when an individual is provided with ill- defined objectives/ goals that make the possibility of failure high. And egoistic occurs when the ties binding the individual to others are slackened and there is absence of adequate social integration. Farmer suicide in India