Sociological Perspectives On Suicide

Most people would assume that with the higher rates of suicide that more people would understand suicide and ways to help prevent it and yet the numbers just keep rising. Symbolic Interactionism can be used to describe how our society views suicide and why suicide is an all too common escape from life. Some of the prominent causes of suicide are pain, loneliness, rejection, abuse, deep sadness, guilt, depression, helplessness and most of all hopelessness. Although most of the time our society as a collective does not see that a person is suffering from these problems until it is too late. When people take their own lives, family members and peers see this act as being selfish. It’s often hard for people who do not suffer from a mental illness to understand why people who do have them act the way they do. A majority of people blow off mental illnesses because they think that someone might just be acting a certain way for attention or don’t actually see the real problem. In some cultures suicide can be a rewarding sacrifice. For example, when people make a heroic sacrifice for the benefit of their community. In the United States, we don’t necessarily understand how sacrificing a person can be beneficial to the society, but to the other cultures it’s something that can be highly

The importance of social factors over the individual can also be seen in Durkheim’s work on suicide (Stones, 2008). Suicide was explained in terms of two independent variables, integration in society and regulation by society. Low levels of integration led to egoistic suicide, while low levels of regulation led to anomic suicide. Durkheim cited egoism and anomie as the main causes of suicide in the modern world; a world which he believed showed less interaction and people thinking more about themselves than others. As a result, people are less bound to one another, there is less community and social control is weaker (Stones, 2008). Durkheim applied his

Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess different sociological explanations of suicide. (21 marks)

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

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

Suicide is defined as the act of taking one’s own life voluntarily. Sometimes, talking about this situation makes people very uncomfortable because, according to today’s society, it’s a terrifying word. For this reason, most people try to avoid this subject they are unwilling to talk about it or deal with it. Suicide has become the third leading cause of death for teenagers; the rate of suicide has increased dramatically over the years. Teenagers who commit suicide suffer from a severe case of depression, leading them to think that the only solution to end their pain is by ending their own life. The difference in gender plays a role in how one may take their life. Males usually use guns or knives to hurt themselves while females usually use pills. It’s important to take this subject seriously and try to find different solutions for this social issue by applying a variety of sociological theories including the structural functionalism, the conflict theory and the symbolic interactionist.

Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess different sociological explanations of suicide. (21 marks)

Suicide is the act of killing yourself. It is the 11th leading cause of death in America (CDC 2009). I have never had any intentions on committing suicide and I never really understood why people commit suicide that’s why I chose this topic to help me understand what problems people go through that makes them do such a thing. Sociology is the study of social behavior and the culture of humans. There are numerous reasons like financial stress, family problems or mental health disorders that lead to suicide. The number one cause of suicide is untreated depression. The issues that were just listed are some social conditions from society that results in a suicidal

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

The existence of too much and too little integration and regulation results in different suicides such as egotistic and anomie. Egoistic suicide happens when individuals are integrated too little (such as elderlies), there is excessive individualism, which is low social integration. Individuals who do decide to commit egoistic suicide are just not strongly supported by their peers in a unified social group. On the other hand, anomie suicide is committed once the person’s sense of perseverance is lost and individuals not being connected to the society. The circumstance of uncertainty results from the breakdown of morals and values and from the lack of ambition and

1.How do the perspectives of people from different cultures differ on social issues such as suicide? How does the psychological perspective view suicide? What is unique about the sociologist 's perspective?

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.

One thing that made this book so huge is that it addresses things like bullying and suicide.Suicide is also the third most common cause of death among people in America aged 10 to 24.This novel written by Jay Asher has caused movements addressing these problems.I agree with how it does introduce these problems throughout the book.There are people who want to ban this book, but the book has created movements to stop bullying and suicide.Other books have addressed other problems (racism for example)and caused movements to stop bullying suicide and more etc..How is suicide addressed in Thirteen Reasons Why?

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

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.