Suicide is conscious termination of life. It is death that occurs after intentionally injuring yourself. The term 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.
The famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917) provided a sociological explanation of that what usually is considered most individual of acts - suicide. We live now in a period of socio - economic change, value change and a more rapid scientific and technical progress.Many people have difficulty in adapting to the high requirements of today. However, suicide is not just a modern society "disease. " It has existed for centuries, but the passing of time had changed societies attitudes to suicide.
However, suicide has always been and remains a shocking, controversial phenomenon and raises a lot of discussions. I would argue that causes of suicide are social, rather than individual. It has long been observed that the social relationship has influence on suicide.Comparative statistics for countries and categories of people within each country showed that suicide rates were relatively constant; therefore it must be a social fact that a collective tendency towards suicide existed. Durkheim examined suicide statistics and found that no matter how diverse and unique the motives of suicide would be, the suicide general trend of the numbers of growth and decline is repeated in each country and changing because of social factors.
He considered suicide rates as a social fact and social disintegration as a major reason of the suicide.It was an effect of imbalance of social structural forces. As Thompson wrote, that “it was suicide rates, as disclosed by statistics, that constituted the social fact to be explained as an effect of an imbalance of social structural forces”. Durkheim aimed to study suicide as a social not psychological or biological phenomenon.
He stated that suicide cannot be explained only by individual reasons, but it is necessary to take into account the conditions of society and human relationships, because they are primarily influential to the prevalence of suicide.The sociologist suggests that suicide becomes acceptable to a person who is weakly integrated into the group. However, it is also an acceptable solution for individuals who are highly integrated in the group, when it supports self-destruction, in other words too much individualism or too much social pressure. Durkheim also stated that collective tendencies could be related to sets of causes and he classified the suicide into a section of four types: egoism, altruism, anomie and fatalism. The first, weak integration case may result in egoistic suicide.
Considering egoistic suicide, Durkheim see that this type is closely related to religion, family, and political communities. Suicide rates were higher for Protestants than Catholics, both in comparisons between predominantly Protestant countries and Catholic countries, and between Protestants and Catholics in the same society. Suicide has been condemned by both religions. The only substantial difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is that Protestantism admit to the individual's right to weigh up his own beliefs.Catholic religion has priestly and sacramental support.
The individual cannot even evaluate his beliefs in terms of history, as the original text, which is based on this belief is inaccessible. The tradition is an unshakable thing. Moreover, in Catholic way of thinking, any change is a real scandal. Protestantism is more creative. So I would conclude that the Protestant tendency to suicide is associated with the spirit of the religion giving the individual the right to reflect on his faith.
A further example of egoistic suicide was the higher rate to be found among adults who were unmarried compared with married people of the same age. When examining the family as a social group influence on the individual, we can also say that childless married men have weak immunity, and childless married women commit suicide more often than unmarried women of the same age. The family has the power to prevent suicide and the more family is stronger, more larger its protective power. And as Durkheim wrote, for the same reason, the larger a crowd, the more capable of violence the passions vented by it.Consequently, in a family of small numbers, common sentiments and memories cannot be very intense.
The family is a powerful safeguard against suicide, so the more strongly it is constituted the greater its protection. Finally, between political communities, the suicide was rare in young societies, which grows increasingly concentrating and in the case of disintegration of societies, the suicide rate is increasing every time, also the rate fell during the period of wars and political crises.So, the great social upheavals induce collective feelings and concentrating all activities for one purpose, it promotes the integration of society, because fewer individual thinks about himself and more about the overall cause. This leads to the conclusion that the suicide rate varies inversely with the degree of social groups whose member is an individual. This type of suicide fully justifies its name because selfishness is the real cause of suicide.
Problems with personal life, which seems to be directly impel to suicide, is only incidental causes.The individual breaks down on the slightest factors, because public status made him suitable to become suicide victim. Unlike the egoistic, altruistic suicide was not an individual's choice and it was the result of too much integration in the society. This is the second suicide type and it is lack of individuality, which is leading to a strong pressure to self-sacrifice.
When a community requires to sacrifice the individual has to obey, and as Thompson wrote, “he cannot resist the pressure to sacrifice the self for the groups interest even if it meant committing suicide”.Durkheim pointed out that “the primitive societies like the Goths likewise believed that those who die a natural death are destined to languish forever in caverns full of venomous creatures”. Also as an examples of primitive societies include suicides by people approaching retirement or having a disease as well as wife's suicide after the death of her husband and servants suicide after the death of their chiefs. Durkheim explained that “when a person kills himself, in all these cases, it is not because he assumes the right to do so but, on the contrary, because it is his duty“.However, the very high suicide rate in the military is explained by Durkheim that “the soldier kills himself at the least disappointment, for the most futile reasons, for a refusal of leave, a reprimand, an unjust punishment, a delay in promotion, a question of honor, a flush of momentary jealousy or even simply because other suicides have occurred before his eyes or to his knowledge”.
The third type of suicide is anomic suicide which is similar to egoistic. Their main reason is weakened social control, as Thompson wrote, “the low extreme of the regulation continuum”.When a society or social group is in crisis, then disorganization and well-established hierarchy of norms collapsing and new traditions are not yet widespread. It is not clear to society, what is possible and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, then there can be assumptions of anomic suicide. It is certainly true that the economic crisis encourages suicidal behavior. However, if increased rate in suicides is due to the bad conditions of life, then it should be significantly reduced, at a time when the country's wealth is going up.
With the rise in well-being also human desires are growing. Then there is felt opportunity to win more in life, people are becoming more demanding, intolerant of any rules, and also the traditional rules loses its powers. A man can live, when his demands do not interfere with the ability to meet them, it is therefore necessary to restrict that needs. Usually those demands are limited by the public. The crisis disrupts the function, so there is spread of chaos, anomie, suicide.
Anomie generates nervous tension and fatigue irritable state.Simpson stated that “no living being can be happy or even exist unless his needs are sufficiently proportioned to his means. In other words, if his needs require more than can be granted, or even merely something of a different sort, they will be under continual friction and can only function painfully“. The other, fourth type is fatalistic suicide that occurs in the social conditions of excessive regulation in which human life is too much regulated by social norms, repression and when a person no longer has any freedom of choice.These can be situations of childless married woman (presumably where divorce was difficult), young husbands, and slaves. As Durkheim wrote that “to bring out the ineluctable and inflexible nature of a rule against which there is no appeal, and in contrast with the expression "anomy" which has just been used, we might call it fatalistic suicide”.
To sum up, all these facts with the support of Durkheim theories show that the suicide rate can be sociological explained. I think that socialenvironment where the suicide victim lived influenced this individual negatively, so he lost value of searching for the sense of life. Moreover, every society is characterized by a certain power of collective energy that makes a person commit suicide. Suicidal actions at first glance, seem to be only an individual’s personal way of manifestation. In fact, it is only result of obvious outward manifestation of social status.
Every social group has some, its own set of collective suicidal behavior from which rises the individual suicidal behavior, rather than vice versa.That collective tendency is made of in a particular society prevalent egoism, altruism and anomie, and adjacent to them, the appearance of their consequences, dreamy melancholy, strong renunciation of the world and from all over the rising trend of desperate tiredness. These community tendencies are encouraging individuals to commit suicide. Durkheim made it clear that social facts are objective. Since, therefore, moral acts such as suicide are reproduced not merely with an equal but with a greater uniformity, we must likewise admit that they depend on forces external to individuals.
Only, since these forces must be of a moral order and since, except for individual men, there is no other moral order of existence in the world but society, they must be social. As for personal life events, which are usually considered to be the direct causes of suicide, their effects are possible only if for such an action, spiritual human terms are already mature, which, in turn, is a public state of mind resound.The suicides are not due to problems with which people face in order to survive, so it is clear that any effort to reduce the human struggle for survival and to make life easier does not stop the spread of suicide. Today suicide happens more frequently than in earlier times, but it is not due to the fact that in order to survive people have to put more devastating effort or that our legitimate needs are less satisfied, but it is because we do not know where our true needs end and we do not see if our efforts make sense.
To find out for himself his desire to commit suicide a man is looking for reasons directly in to surrounding circumstances. Of course, the feelings come from the outside, but not in the sense that they are caused by one or another of his own life events – it is in the sense that he took it from the social group to which individuals mostly belong.
