assess the usefulness of different sociological approaches to suicide

Despite the lack of research done by sociologists on the topic of suicide, little is known about what societies perspective of it. In this research paper, the sociological aspects of suicide are going to be brought up. The way suicide deals with deviance and how a particular Sociologist studied different theories. The analyzation of four journal articles that are cited back up my answer in my research paper. My research question is, Does the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why impact societies viewpoint on the sociological issues of suicide? Providing evidence to prove this true through the general thoughts and knowledge I have cumulated in Introduction in Sociology. Oddly enough there is not much research in the general category of suicide in sociology

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.

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.

However, as Durkheim attempted to restrict this definition to suicide being actions intended to result in loss of life, many disagreed with him (3). He then decided to search for a new definition of suicide. Digging deeper, he filed through cases deemed suicide that included actions of heroism such as a father jumping in the path of a bullet for his son. Such cases reveal a situation in which death is not desired by the individual but is nonetheless an inevitable consequence of the actions taken. This sort of suicide, according to Durkheim, should be known by any other name under the same broad term. Suicide can be divided into smaller categories. The first subcategory defined by Durkheim is Egoistic Suicide. An individual who commits a suicide of this distinction is considered to feel detached from society and thus separated from life’s meaning. He further explains by saying, a society with a focus on human interaction and involvement produces a value on the individual’s existence and contribution. If the society lacks human interaction and involvement, a low value is placed on an individual’s existence and contribution. Thus, Egoistic Suicide occurs when an individual has placed a low value on

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

The debate between Mark A.R. Kleinman and Ira Byock discuss the topic of suicide whether it should be legal or not; Kleinman is arguing for suicide to be legal, which will come to the conclusion that suicide should be allowed for anyone and not have any punishment for an attempt. Byock argues the opposing argument that suicide should be illegal, but the focus of this argument will be Kleiman’s point of view. The exigency, the problem that can be fixed, is viewed in this argument that it is the people’s right to kill themselves and this is due to the depression and/or the feeling of thinking they are better off dead. The audience directed towards this argument is people committing suicide and those who oppose the people committing the ‘crime’ of suicide. Constraints, the biases, in this situation would be ethical beliefs and the people who have witnessed or experienced these suicidal thoughts. Kleinman’s reasoning is the use of emotion and human rights are seen to enhance his argument. Therefore suicide should not be legal, it should be treated instead of encouraged.

The topic of suicide can easily become uncomfortable when discussing. Thoughts of family or friends using a permanent solution to a temporary problem is hard to grasp. Why would an individual choose to do this? Did it stem from personal reasons or was it fueled by a number of out-siding factors. Using Sociology we can decipher human behavior and gain an insight into a global issue .

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.

Durkheim went into detail about three-suicide types: anomic, altruistic, and egotistic. Anomic suicide makes individuals feel lost or alone in society. For example teen suicide, the teen cannot relate to another individual. Altruistic suicide is based on excessive regulations of individuals by social force. For example political or social pressure makes and individual feel disconnected with society or themselves. Egotistic suicide is a total detachment from society. He argues that suicide is a social factor. The social factors he argues are social surroundings and whether the individual is integrated in social structure. He does state as well does Mills that men have a higher rate of suicide than woman do. Mills believed that men were unable to make the connection between social and individual life. Durkheim and Mills both have different perspectives however they both believed that our society and individuals needed to make a connection in order to

Durkheim defines fatalistic suicide as the results of “excessive regulation”. In many traditional societies, fatalism was served as an illustration of suicide; Durkheim was faced with the problem that even in societies which have an abundance of social capital, individuals, even so, kill themselves. For example, the conditions which many African men and women had to endure during the time of slavery may have made individuals feel that the only way to escape was through suicide. Since the many men and women would consider themselves to be in a hopeless position with a condemned fate or immediately doomed to be a slave. Fatalism focuses on high regulation and low integration to help prevent this suicide from continuing on, individuals can stop reverting to the old way of thinking things. Racism is old and a worn-out way of thinking. People should embrace everyone and increase integration amongst societies. By incorporating culture and different views. With this approach fatalistic suicide will slowly decrease and consolidate a future of involvement and authority for people to improve their

Durkheim noted that suicide rates were here in more individualistic communities – less social integration and lower levels of moral regulation…

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.

This definition generated some objections which Jones (1986) clarified, first was the question of at what point does an action, which results in death, shift from being an accident to a suicide. Jones argues that this reinforces Durkheim’s argument rather than undermine it, that suicides are just an excessive form of common practices. Secondly, there was an insistence that these acts are individual rather than social and are therefore a concern of psychology (Jones, 1986). Although Durkheim acknowledged the viability of studying suicide in psychology he also contended that suicide could be studied as a social fact sui generis. Having defined suicide, Durkheim then examined the extra-social causes of suicide, determined the nature of the social causes and then set out to find a more definitive account of ‘suicide aptitude’ and its relation to social facts (Durkheim, 1897; Jones,

Michael Phillipson observes the positivist methodology employed by Durkheim and other researches ‘ride roughshod over the very social reality they are trying to comprehend.’ He argues that suicide is a construct of social actors, an aspect of social reality. Official statistics on suicide are therefore not wrong or inaccurate; they are part of the social world. They are interpretations made by official of what is seen to be unnatural death.