Emile Durkheim Suicide

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

Feelings of isolation have been linked to higher suicide rates. Durkheim’s study on suicide during the industrial revolution supports this theory as he states that, “people were increasingly disconnected from their communities and that this social upheaval had a greater effect on suicide rates than other factors like wealth” (Winner & Collishaw, 2011). Interestingly enough, despite the increase of media attention on suicide, no studies have been published that explain why suicide rates vary among different groups. However, various factors are involved in the decision to commit suicide. As a result, suicide rates vary according to race, gender and age.

Egoistic suicide which is when individuals are not integrated well enough into society for example people who live alone compared to those who live with family. Secondly Altruistic suicide which is when individuals are felt to be too integrated into society causing suicide, for example members of the armed forces were said to have greater suicide rates than civilian personnel as they were too strongly integrated into a united body. Durkheim also put forward the idea of Anomic suicide, this is when the norms and values in society become unclear or confused in times of great social change and an individual is not taught to adapt to changes well enough. For example an unexpected death of a family member is sudden social change which can cause Anomic suicide. Lastly, he suggested Fatalistic suicide. Fatalism is the excessive amount of regulation which leads to one committing suicide.

Before discussing the social factors that affect suicide rates, Durkheim attempted to narrow down the ideas behind the reasoning of individual suicides and the level of suicide rates. One proposal to explain the suicide rate was the environment, such as the climate or conditions. Durkheim agreed, after analysing Europe that the suicide rate

2. According to Emile Durkheim, a category of people with a higher suicide rate typically has:

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

28) to react to and explain the changes society as he had known it. He alluded to how the division of labor as a primary element in the undoing of society. Furthermore, he witnessed the erosion of a patriarchy, so to speak, and feared society to be barreling towards amorality. Without someone instilling good morals into society at large, those who were not strong enough to make decisions on their own would be left behind. It is without coincidence that simultaneously religion’s grip on the masses seemed to be waning. In his book Suicide: A sociological study, Durkheim specifically researches the period between 1841 and 1872. He notes the reason he chose this time period was due to the rich climate of upheaval. (Durkheim, 1951 [1897], p.46) Could this have led Durkheim to conclude that those who were in a more close-knit community, specifically a particular religious community, had a lower of a rate of suicide? Political unrest was pervasive in European society at the time. Many countries were revolting against their governments.

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

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.

In his study he found that certain social groups where more likely to commit suicide than others; for example, Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics; as ‘the Catholic Religion integrated its members more strongly into a religious community’ (Haralambos and Horlborn, 2000: 975). Durkheim based this upon the

According to Durkheim’s theory, society can play a part in suicide rates due to strenuous social change which lead to unclear norms in a community. When this emotional strain leads to suicide, Durkheim would explain this as anomic suicide. First Nation groups experienced this during the time of residential schools. Aboriginal people were forced to rapidly change their ways

statistics displayed that some categories of people were more prone to take their own lives,

Emile Durkheim was considered one of the greats of the sociology world. His use of scientific methodology to identify social factors which contributed to suicide has produced a foundational model for empirically based social research still relevant in sociology today. The purpose of this essay is to examine Durkheim’s study of the social causes of suicide, specifically how his theory of social integration and regulation contributed in interpreting these differences in suicide rates. This essay will argue that although heavily criticised Durkheim’s findings of the social factors which contributed to suicide are still relevant in Australia today more than a century later. In order to support this claim, firstly an overview of Durkheim’s social theory will be provided, specifically of his social causes of suicide. In addition it will then focus on how Durkheim interpreted these differences in suicide rates between various groups using his theory of social integration and discuss the two types of suicide Durkheim identified in this area. We will then discuss social regulation and its two forms of suicide. Criticism of his theory will then be discussed, before providing relevant statistics from Australia in regards to suicide rates of teen and indigenous communities and examine these figures to explain these variances in light of Durkheim’s social theory’s, to support the fact that Durkheim’s theory’s are still relevant in Australia today. Emile Durkheim was born in 1858 in a

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