Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Teenage Suicide Essay Example For Students

Teenage Suicide Essay Book Report SuicideDurkheims intention was to explain the apparently individual act ofsuicide in terms of societys influences. His approach was based on adistinction between individual cases of suicide and societys, or socialgroups, suicide rates. According to Durkheim, the stability andconsistency in suicide rates was an irreducible social fact which couldonly be understood sociologically. Social facts are collective phenomena,which hold back individual behavior. For Durkheim, societies hold backindividuals in two ways. First, by binding them to each other to a greaterextent through shared membership of social institutions (integration). Second, by providing specific goals and means for attaing them(regulation). Durkheim developed four types of suicide from his conception of socialand moral order. Egoistic suicide is the weakening of the ties binding theindividual to society, producing an excess of individualism. Which intimes of crisis, can leave the individual isolated, feeling a lack ofsupport and more vulnerable to depression and ultimately suicide. We will write a custom essay on Teenage Suicide specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Altruistic suicide, which is the opposite of egoistic suicide, theindividuals ego, rather than being to great, is to weak to resist thedemands of social custom to commit suicide. Anomie suicide is a result of apersons activity lacking in regulation. Durkheim distinguished betweenacute and chronic anomie. Acute anomie may be the result of some suddencrisis, such as an economic crisis. Chronic anomie is the result of a moregradual development of modern societies where individuals are increasinglyplaced into situations of competition with each other. Durkheim used similarities between suicide rates and various rates ofexternal association to show the existence of his key causal concepts. Forexample, the statistics showed that Catholic areas had consistently lowersuicide rates than Protestant areas; people who were married with childrenwere less inclined to suicide than the single or childless; and a societyssuicide rate fell in times of war or political upheaval. Durkheim was notarguing that the differences in religion, family life or political activitywere factors influencing suicide. Rather he was saying that therelationship between suicide and religious, domestic and political lifewere the invisible underlying causes of suicide. Durkheim used similarities between increased suicide rates and periodsof economic fluctuation to illustrate the existence of anomic suicide. Intimes of rapid economic change an increasing number of people findthemselves in altered situations where the norms and values by which theyhad previously lived their lives becomes less relevant and the resultingstate of moral deregulation, or anomie, leaves them more vulnerable tosuicide. So, Durkheim was able to argue from his research that, even thoughsuicide appears to be a purely individual phenomenon, its underlying causesare essentially social. As Raymond Aron (1968), summarizing Durkheimsachievement, put it, There are, therefore, specific social phenomena whichgovern individual phenomena. The most impressive, most eloquent example isthat of the social forces which drive individuals to their deaths, each onebelieving they are obeying only themselves (p. 34). Although Durkheims work had a significant influence on futuresociological studies of suicide and the development of sociology generally,it is important to bear in mind the limitations of this influence and themany criticisms that have been made of Suicide (see, e.g. Lester, 1992). Inthe sociology of suicide, as in most areas within the health field, a broaddistinction can be made between positivist studies of social causation andneo-phenomenological studies of social construction. Curiously, neitherperspective accepts Durkheims approach. Positivist researchers, whilegenerally approving of Durkheims attempt to correlate suicide rates withsocial variables, have quite legitimately claimed that Durkheims keyconcepts of social integration and regulation were defined too loosely toallow for proper empirical testing. Therefore, in imperialistic terms, thetheory was not scientific because it could never be refuted by theevidence. .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa , .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .postImageUrl , .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa , .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa:hover , .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa:visited , .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa:active { border:0!important; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa:active , .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u35f894d885fc4d5fac18b800a84357aa:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Beowulf: First Literary Superhero EssayPhenomenologists, questioning the very idea of trying to explainsuicide sociologically, have honed in on Durkheims uncritical acceptanceof official suicide rates. Research by Douglas (1967) and Atkinson (1978)into the social construction of suicide statistics has shown how certaintypes of death (for example hangings and drownings) and certain evidencefrom the deceaseds past (for example, depression, social problems,isolation) act as suicidal cues which, taken together, enable officialsto construct a suicidal biography which would then legitimize a suicideverdict. Atkinson, for example, shows that a death will only be recorded asa suic ide when officials are able to discover evidence consistent withgeneral cultural assumptions in Western societies about why people killthemselves and how they go about doing it. He goes on to argue thatDurkheim and others who use official suicide rates and find themconsistently related to factors such as social isolation and status changemay not in fact be discovering the social causes of suicide. DismissingDurkheims ambition of trying to explain the social basis of suicidescientifically, phenomenologists argue that the most sociology can offer isinterpretations of how suicidal meanings are constructed in givensituations. So what can a book written a century ago widely criticized and basedon suspect 19th century statistics tell us about suicide in contemporarysocieties? One answer might be that Durkheims brilliant theory can stillprovide a basis for theorizing not only about suicide, but also aboutdepression and mental health generally (Brown ; Harris, 1978). Anotheranswer might be that empirically Durkheim was to some extent right aboutthe causes of suicide and that his theoretical concepts of integration andanomie can help to understand a range of self-harming behaviors fromsuicide to self-mutilation and eating disorders. Given the criticisms of Suicide by others and its apparentshortcomings in terms of Durkheims own ambitions, are most commentatorscorrect when they grant the work an honored but essentially historicalclassic status? Have we really progressed beyond Durkheim? I am not surewe have. So in terms of the relation between the individual and society we haveeither biologically orientated theories which depict the person as littlemore than a social organism driven to suicide by internal factors, suchas low levels of serotonin metabolic 5-hydroxindoleacetic acid in thecerebrospinal fluid, or sociological explanations where an entirely socialindividual is somehow pushed towards suicide by various external factorsin much the same way as one billiard ball is pushed towards a pocket byanother. Whether we are studying suicide, other aspects of mortality oranything else, we are inevitably confronted by a series of tensions arisingfrom trying to make sense of the actions of biological organisms which arepartially influenced by their culture, trying to understand through ourexperience and through abstract reason, and trying to make sense of amaterial world where real things happen, like people killing themselves,but which we can only make sense of through various systems of thought. Nowhere, in my view, are the resulting tensions and the brilliant attemptto resolve them more evident than in Suicide. This is what makes thisbrilliant book a classic, and a classic which is just as important tosocial science today as it was 100 years ago. REFERENCESARON, R. (1968). Main currents in sociological thought II. London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ATKINSON, J. (1978). Discovering suicide. Basingstoke: Macmillan. BROWN, G. HARRIS, T. (1978). The social origins of depression. London:Tavistock. DOUGLAS, J. (1967). The social meanings of suicide. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press. LESTER, D. (ed.) (1992). Le suicideone hundred years on suicide. Philadelphia, PA: Charles Press. STENGEL, E. (1973). Suicide and attempted suicide. London: Penguin.