Sociology and Suicide

Although the four groups are varying in their relevance today due to the many changes in society since Durkheim first named them, they are still strongly recognizable in modern society. Egoistic Suicide relates to the degree of social interaction and the strength of mutual values within a social group. Some of the variables

“Suicide may be a way of expressing grievances. To this extent, it can be explained with a theory of social control. The central task of a theory of social control is to explain why, given that a conflict occurs, it is handled in one way and not another” (Manning,

The interpretivist approach directly contrasts the positivist one and seeks to focus on the meanings of suicide for those involved. Douglas criticises Durkheim's use of official statistics as they are not accurate and recommends qualitative studies to discover the real rate of suicide. The statistics are a result of a coroners label and thus it is not trustworthy in his view. This suggested that cases are decided on "the basis of probability”. Douglas further seeks to find out the meaning of the suicide

“Suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result” (Durkheim 34). Suicide is a phenomenon that has plagued our world since the beginning of time. It currently accounts for the second leading cause of death in people ages ten to twenty-four years old (Garni Powerpoint). This means of ending your own life is something we can prevent as a society. If we can eliminate societal pressures and stereotypes we can all be treated equally. All suicides during a certain time period are grouped together, when in all reality we should be treating each situation as it’s own. Durkheim states “...with it’s own unity, individuality, and consequently its own nature- a nature, furthermore, dominantly social”.

For many the concept of teenage suicide is almost always correlated with the psychological mindset of the individuals. However, there is a lot of the factors behind these horrifying events that actually are more sociologically related. These catastrophic events are directly correlated with interactions with the world. The loss of teenagers across the world is increasing and it is a subject that should be touched on in both sciences. Throughout this paper the study of teen suicide in the sociological view will be discussed by going through Emile Durkheim’s studies and the sub groups in which it can occur. These events are related back to such things as social rejection, religious beliefs and social situations. This paper will also touch on the different types of suicide and what the suicides correlate with. The main purpose of this paper is to show how teen suicide is not only a psychological problem with students but to breakdown the areas in which cause these feelings.

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

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

By applying the functionalist perspective to the issue of suicide, we will highlight the importance of shared social morals and bonds. “When rapid social change or other disruptive conditions occur, moral values may erode, and people may become more uncertain about how to act and about whether or not their life has meaning” (Kendall , 2014) . Suicide falls under

Durkheim argues that the suicide rate is a social factor that can be interpreted as an indicator for social solidarity within a society (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01114474).

Bridgend is a little town in Wales that is notorious for its high suicide rates among teenagers. These suicides are similar in the way the individuals committed the violent act, the places they went, and the questions that they left their families with. In this little town, there are many theories to why these young adults committed suicide and this paper will be splitting them up into the three different sociology theories: symbolic interaction, functionalism, and conflict theory.

In 1820, due to the work of Andre-Michel Guerry and Adolphe Quetelet, the basic foundations for moral based statistics pertaining to immoral behaviors developed; of specific interest here was suicide. From this foundation came several contrasting views on the origin of what produced suicidal like behaviors. Some reserved a Humanistic approach while others took on a more fatalistic approach as they believed such actions would undermine the Christian belief. Nationalists set their minds on the idea that foreign influences were the cause of such acts while other theorists sided with Darwinism and simply viewed these irreversible acts as simply, “survival of the fittest (2013).”

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.

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.