Individualism And Suicide

This claim responds to the problem of the increased amount of suicide over the years. Places where individualism is the highest priority can cause this problem. Durkheim, the “father of sociology” is cited by Smith. She uses his research to support her claim. The research shows the significance of community

Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist in the late 1800s and early 1900s who came up with the concepts of social regulation and integration. These concepts have to do with the state of societies and how they work. More specifically, social regulation is the norms created by either formal laws or social pressure. The way people are expected to live and perform their daily tasks or jobs are somewhat decided by social regulation. In its most basic form, it’s what is and isn’t deemed acceptable by societies standards. Social integration on the other hand is the extent to which the group or society matters. This brings up the importance of the individual as opposed to the importance of the society. Strength of social ties within the community are big influences on how socially integrated a society is. These two concepts helped Durkheim better form an understanding for things such as suicide rates.

The bottom was characterize as a large black neighborhood in Ohio, that stood above the hill of Medallion was a predominately white wealthy community. Before it was call the Bottom, now they call it the suburbs. Consequently, a good slave master promised freedom and piece of land if the slave perform difficult chores, when they finish the work he was hastens about giving away valley land he hope to give away piece of the bottom. However, the slave thought the valley land was the bottom, the master told them when God look down, it's the bottom, it the bottom of heaven best land there is. And they agree to it, And it was done. Shadrack was a citizen of the bottom, he fought in WWI, return back as a damaged man that couldn't cope with reality of what was happening in the world, his mental state of mind was unstable he live around the border of the town to find harmony in his life.

Durkheim focuses on the stability of society, and discusses the social causes of suicide. His work shows how ideology contributes to stability, and he describes abnormal conditions as anomie. Durkheim states, "in normal conditions the collective order is regarded as just by the great majority of persons …[b]ut when society is disturbed by some painful crisis or by beneficent but abrupt transitions, it is momentarily incapable of exercising this influence [of limiting desires]"

The article that I chose for my review is Does Deinstitutionalization Increase Suicide? written by Jangho Yoon and Tim A. Bruckner. The reason I chose this article is because I am very interested in mental health and treatment of mental illness. The article focuses on public psychiatric hospitals deinstitutionalizing mental health patients into the community for public mental health care. A reason for deinstitutionalizing patients can be because of the amount of money that the facility could lose. In my opinion, mental health facilities prefer to admit patients with insurance or who are private pay compared to the uninsured or those with low economic status because of the chances of losing the money for services provided. Those who are deinstitutionalized from a mental health facility find themselves going to public community mental health facilities. Although public facilities have resources to help patients, there are some diagnosis that these facilities are unable to treat, in this case the patient needs to be in a more advanced institutional facility. Another thing that the article talks about is the relationship between deinstitutionalization and the rate of suicide.

As I was reading through the different views on the causes of suicide, I thought that the sociocultural view made most sense for me. It made sense due to the claim that a person’s connections with social groups, religions, and communities can determine suicide probability (Comer, 2014). I imagine a sliding spectrum where people who are very invested in everything around them are on one end and on the other are people who don’t care about society. The two ends are the high suicide probability areas. Altruistic suicides where lives are sacrificed would fall on the invested end of the spectrum while the egoistic suicides which society has no control over a person and anomic suicides where a person’s social environment fails to provide structure

For example, Emile Durkheim’s (1858-1917) research showed that the suicide rate was strongly influenced by the extent to which people were socially integrated with others.

Many researches have been done every year since 1970. Lots of volunteers try to put this area in control as well as make a great effort to prevent the person who wants to commit suicide there. However, the annual reports have been shown that only corpses were found and buried kindly. In recent years, the number of found deaths from researches has been decreasing. At the beginning of years in this decade, the number has gained from 70 to

This report investigates the autonomy and independence that the United States of America’s nation has been established upon, involving the capability of patients making their own decisions. The ethical issue that will be largely discussed is physician-assisted suicide. Do you think it should it be legal in all 50 states or should it be ethically unheard of and illegal throughout the nation? There will be discussions of a specific case involving this issue, where the debate originated, and an analysis of ideological standpoints for both those who are for physician-assisted suicide becoming legal and others who are against the concept. Also, there will be a proposal with an alternative of how to create a more appealing option for these patients

Durkheim’s theory consisted of finding a problem which was suicide. He then came up with a dependent variable which was the suicide rate. The social forces became the independent variable. The hypothesis would be what the suicide rate would vary with. When he collected his date Durkheim would go into detail about each individuals life and any uprising problems that he could find. He would then analyze the data into four categories which are the three most common types of suicide (egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide and anomic suicide). After looking at the date and matching it up with the proper suicide type Durkheim would then draw conclusions or form a theory.

The first article, “Predicting moral sentiment towards physician-assisted suicide: The role of religion, conservatism, authoritarianism, and Big Five personality,” studies, as mentioned in the title, the effect religion and religiosity, political beliefs, authoritarianism, and the big five personality traits have on people's attitude towards doctor assisted suicide. The big five personality traits are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability/neuroticism, and openness. The theoretical framework used in this article was based on previous research that identified psychosocial predictors of feelings towards physician assisted suicide. They believe that religiosity correlates to negative opinions on physician assisted

Durkheim believed that the suicide rate was a social fact; he found that social forces such as social integration, which refers to an attachment to social groups (eco) and regulation which refers to… both factors are external to the individual and determine the level of suicide in society. For example Durkheim identified that the suicide rate drops in time of war, not only in victorious countries but also in defeated countries (JF). Furthermore Durkheim also noted that external factors such as the state of the economic climate also affected suicide rates. For instance research has shown that when the economy expands during economic booms or contracts sharply during a recession, both social integration and regulation may weaken and therefore

Durkheim was a functionalist, and theorised that a holistic social narrative could be identified which would explain individual behaviour. He argued that, whilst society was made up of its members, it was greater than the sum of its parts, and was an external pressure that determined the behaviour of the individuals within it. At that time, suicide rates in Europe were rising, and so the causes of suicide were on the agenda. Since suicide is seen as an intrinsically personal and individual action, establishing it as having societal causes would be a strong defence for Durkheim’s functionalist perspective. Durkheim used the comparative method to study the official suicide rates of various European countries. While he was not the first to

According to Emile Durkheim social phenomena must be explained sociologically not psychologically. In his now classic work, Suicide he was interested in explaining a social phenomenon, suicide, and employed both data and theory to offer an explanation. By aggregating data for large groups of people in Europe, Durkheim was able to discern patterns in suicide rates and connect those patterns with another concept (or variable): religious affiliation. Durkheim found that Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than were Catholics. At this point, Durkheim 's analysis was still in the data stage; he had not proposed an explanation for the different suicide rates of the two groups. It was when Durkheim introduced the ideas of anomie and social solidarity that he began

to survive. The only ways Durkheim believed this would be possible with unity in society, by people working together in order to maintain equilibrium in the different parts of society. Moreover, individuals must maintain a moral commitment to their society. One of the subjects Durkheim talks about is the functional approach to crime. Although he didn’t think crime was good for society he saw it as normal and to a certain extent as positive to social functions. Because society couldn’t enforce or eradicate crime completely individuals could work collectively on change and remain flexible to new adaptations to society because if society could control crime in its totality then there would be no room for social contributions of individuals. Another functionalism key of reference was what was mentioned earlier the concepts of solidarity. Although the shift of solidarity helped the division of labor the same can’t be said about functionalism. Durkheim inferred that mechanical solidarity was best for functionalism because people worked together shared common values keeping society united and balanced. However, with the change to modern society of Organic solidarity functionalism wasn’t as strong because the complexity of the society made bonds weaker, and thus with the difference of daily tasks and work. The third example of process distinctive of the modern era Durkheim uses is social integration. Durkheim describes social integration by society as one in which people are