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Chapter 7
Suicide
Introduction
• Myth: depression is the major cause of
suicide
• Myth: suicide bombers are generally
psychotic
– Or at least irrational, poor and uneducated
• Every year about 31,000 Americans
commit suicide
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Varieties of Suicidal Experience
• 3 types of suicidal experiences:
– Some threaten suicide; 40% attempted to kill
themselves in the past;
• Many use the attempt as a means of achieving
some objective in life and don’t want to die
– Suicide attempters are ambiguous in their
intent; most do NOT succeed
– 2/3 who commit suicide had prior attempt
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Self-Injurers
• Multiple reasons for these physical acts
• Cutting
– Existing literature suggests substantial
variation among cutters
• In terms of function and form of cutting practices
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Inside the Social Structure and
Organization of Cutting
• “individual deviants,” vs. the “loners” or
“loner deviants”
• Cutters are more difficult to situate in one
specific category of deviance
– Constantly negotiating the boundaries of their
new options and possibilities
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Groups With Higher Suicide Rates
• Stats are not always reliable
• Traditionally, suicide rates are higher in
urban areas
• Today, suicide rates are higher in rural
areas
• The suicide rate is higher among whites
than blacks in the U.S.
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Groups With Higher Suicide Rates
• Protestants have higher suicide rates than
Catholics
– Who in turn have higher rates than Jews
• Men are more likely to kill themselves than
women
• Attempted suicide rates are higher among
women than men
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Groups With Higher Suicide Rates
• Men are more likely to use lethal
instruments such as firearms
• Divorced persons have the highest suicide
rate, married the lowest rate
– And single individuals are intermediate
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Groups With Higher Suicide Rates
• U.S. suicide rates tends to rise with
increasing age
• Findings on the relationship between
social class and suicide are
contradictory
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© 2013, 2010, 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2013, 2010, 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2013, 2010, 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
A Social Profile of Suicide Bombers
• Relatively well-off; middle class; better
educated than their countrymen
• Mostly young, male and single, and see
themselves as martyrs
• Suicide attacks have been common
throughout history
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Situational Factors in Suicide
• Teenagers today are much more likely
than in past to kill themselves
• Going to college is associated with higher
suicide rates
• Suicide in prison is relatively common
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Situational Factors in Suicide
• People with fatal diseases have higher
rates of suicide; this holds true for AIDS
• Mass media has an influence on suicide –
– Highly publicized suicides tend to result in
national suicide rates increasing
© 2013, 2010, 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2013, 2010, 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Global Perspective on Suicide
• Suicide rates are higher in industrialized
countries
• In Western countries, suicide rates peak in
the spring and bottom out in winter
• Suicide occurs more often in the beginning
of the week and very rarely on weekends
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Social Responses to Suicide
• When a loved one commits suicide,
survivors tend to feel guilty
•
• Patients have the right to refuse lifesustaining treatment (living will)
• Several individuals and organizations try
to prevent suicide
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Sociological Theories of Suicide
• To sociologists, causes of suicide do not
reside within the individual
– But rather within the group to whom the
individual belongs
• And the individual’s interaction with
agents of social institutions
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Sociological Theories of Suicide
• Durkheimian theory:
– social integration: involves persons
attaching themselves to groups
– social regulation: involves individuals
being coercively regulated by a group
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Suicide
• In another study,
Durkheim found
that the more
firmly connected
people are to
others, the less
likely they are to
commit suicide;
thus
demonstrating
that even suicide
is impacted by
social forces.
21
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Sociological Theories of Suicide
• Henry and Short theory:
– Interprets suicide as an act of
aggression directed toward oneself
• That results from three factors –
sociological, psychological and
economic
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Sociological Theories of Suicide
• Phenomenological theories:
– Theory of suicidal meanings:
• Individuals impute specific meanings
to their prospective suicidal acts
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Sociological Theories of Suicide
– Theory of suicide process:
• Interprets the social meanings of
suicide as a social prohibition against
suicide
–So that the suicidal person must
overcome the prohibition before
taking his or her own life
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