Durkheim's Suicide And Anomiic Suicide

The untreated depression, frequent deployments, financial stress, substance abuse, borderline personality disorder, often brutal choices and the family separation have been linked to suicide rate among soldiers.

A widely believed cause of this increase in suicides lies mostly on combat aspects. Being in the military is a lifestyle that is truly physically draining. The day to day life of being in the military is stressful. Multiple tours, increased stress, longer hours ‘repetitive deployments and much longer deployments, being away from friends and family more than in the past than in recent years can be believed to take a heavy toll on service members. The Rand Corporation issued in a report on military suicides that states that the US involvement in conflicts since 2001 has taken a toll on the service that has manifested itself in increased suicides. Dr. Brian Craig, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University Of Texas Health Science Center, says that it is not just the traumatic events but the day to day stressors of combat that cause problems. He is also the lead risk management advisor for the DOD Strong Star Research Consortium and found in his research that it is “not being able to sleep in a comfortable bed, not having access to warm,

(Zilvin 2007). A study was conducted to identified higher risks of suicidal in veterans, and the conclusion stated that veterans that are depressed have higher risk for suicide. This results can assist to focus on a certain group continuously and monitor closely to detect suicidal behavior and prevent it. Another cause of suicide is PTSD leads to depression and if not treated could lead to suicide but more study is to be done. ?For example, use and frequency of psychotherapy visits and adherence to psychiatric medications could influence the relationship between depression, PTSD, and completed suicide? (Zilvin 2007).

On the night of March 20th, 2012, a twenty-three year old veteran named William Busbee, locked himself in his car and shot himself in the head. His mother and two little sisters were standing just a few feet away (Multiple Deployments). A veteran commits suicide every eighty minutes. If that number is not shocking to hear then I don’t know what is. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a major factor in this mass suicide of veterans. Suicide among veterans is turning into an epidemic. An epidemic that can be stopped with the help of experienced and educated psychologists. Those psychologists are working hard everyday with veterans who are suffering from PTSD in an attempt to cure and potentially rid the patient of this disorder. Maybe

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is presently known as post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS), is a disorder diagnosed by feelings of anxiety, depression, suicidal attempt or thoughts, repeated nightmares, and unexpected surges of violence. Many veterans are suffering from PTSD. “It has been estimated that between 500,000 and 700,000 Vietnam veterans, about one-fourth of all who served, suffer from PTSD.” (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). Veterans with PTSD have an unbelievably strong link to both suicide attempts and thinking about suicide. Military veterans are exceedingly susceptible to suicide in contrast to citizens. This is caused by the guilt they acquired from action in combat. There is a prevalent cause-and-effect relationship between military service and an unusual risk of suicide. There are studies showing that Vietnam veterans have a higher risk than veterans from our more recent wars. ''I think it demonstrates the experience of being drafted during the Vietnam era had profound, long- term psychological effects on people.” (Likelihood of suicide found unusually high for Vietnam veterans). Vietnam veterans are approximately twice as probable to die by suicide as men in the same age group who evaded the war. There were many men drafted who had to experience things that they were not prepared for, nor did they sign up for. This set them up to be easily affected by the war. Even veterans who signed up for the military are also strongly affected by the outcomes of war. Society doesn’t understand the suffering veterans go through when they have PTSD. It was not always taken so seriously and it wasn’t understood until recently. “In World War I, PTSD was called shell-shock, in World War II, combat fatigue.” (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder). Our society needs to realize the effect of the war on our veterans. Society can no longer be so blind to these

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

Studies have shown that 8,000 soldiers are thought to die by suicide every year, thats Twenty-two per day(Military Bonds)! A study has also shown that fourteen percent of men have contemplated suicide, while a little over five percent had planned it out and two and a half percent had actually attempted it one or more times. The rate of major depression is five times higher than that of an average American(Military Bonds). Post Traumatic Stress disorder is a mental health condition triggered by the result of seeing something terrifying, it makes the person experience emotional distress, loss of interest, guilt, the inability to feel pleasure they may become irritable, aggressive and may not be able to sleep at night(Veterans Statistics). PTSD can also make the person have thoughts of suicide or unwanted thoughts. PTSD can occur over time after being home from a deployment and a study shows that nine percent of military personnel have PTSD shortly after returning home from a deployment, but looking at the same troops a year later thirty-one percent had claimed to suffer from PTSD(Veterans Statistics). A study shows that between five and twenty percent have had PTSD prevalence without help, but fifty percent of people who seek help prevailing over the mental illness(Veterans Statistics) PTSD is the third most prevalent psychiatric

Suicide in the trenches were very common in World War I. Many depressed, or physically exhausted soldiers would resort to suicide to end their struggles. Siegfried Sassoon, a war veteran and English poet, wrote ‘Suicide in the Trenches,’ in an attempt to “avoid sentimentality and self-pity while describing the realities of war.” Published in February, 1918, he writes:

McCarl (2013) states that redeployment and multiple deployments can “further compound a service member’s already-fragile state of mind if sent back into combat without fully recovering from the physical and mental wounds of the previous deployment” (p. 410). Veterans who have reported killing in war had twice the odds of suicidal ideation (Maguen et al, 2015). In a study performed with Vietnam veterans, “sixteen of nineteen suicide attempters (82%) had felt out of control as a result of excessive fear or rage during their tours of duty, including situations in which their anger led to their killing noncombatant civilians” (Hendin, 2014, p. 584).

In this study, we want to find out can be some of the correlates that may be linked to suicide among vets.

Returning home after periods of service on active duty, in any capacity, is something for veterans to look forward to, and so many veterans do well after service, but a large number seem to face service-related challenges, as do not receive the care and services required for successful transition to civilian life. [1][6] The stress that comes with attempting to reintegrate into civilian society is only one of many that contributes to suicidal ideation, so successful reintegration has proven to be a useful tool in the fight against suicide amongst veterans. [18]

Alarming soldier suicide rates (20 soldiers a day commit suicide due to PTSD), warrants a check on what are the causes, effects, and treatments provided to soldiers, especially if they have any mental health issues such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In addition, personnel in other domains such as law enforcement, medical, and firefighter who experience traumatic situations, may be susceptible to PTSD and if it is not treated on time may result in suicide.

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.

Dave Philipps article, In unit stalked by suicide, Veterans try to save one another focuses on veteran members of the Marine Corps, self-named the forgotten battalion. It details the lives of different members after they have served, as they deal with the suicides that continue to plague members of their battalion. One of those members Manny Bojorquez details his own struggle with suicide, and

Suicide, to Durkheim, is “an exaggerated form of ordinary practices,” and they arise from “comparable states of mind” in people, with the only difference between daily and suicidal behavior being the “chance of death” (Durkheim 20-21). Durkheim spends the majority of the work dissecting the “apparent motives” for suicide (Durkheim 151) and observing the varieties of suicide, a feat made difficult by the inaccurate reporting and misunderstandings of investigators. Thus, to understand the types of suicide, we must “reverse the order of our research” for “There can only be as many different types of suicide as there are differences in the causes from which they derive,” (Durkheim 149). He says “if they were all found to have the same essential characteristics, they would be grouped in one class” but “observations that we would need to have are more or less impossible obtain” (Durkheim