Chapter 7 – Suicide

Myths and Realities

• Myth: Since they like themselves more than others as a result of living in a highly individualistic society, Americans are less likely to kill themselves than others.
  • Reality: Every year Americans are far more likely to kill themselves than others as indicated by the much higher rate of suicide than homicide in the United States.
• Myth: Depression is the cause of suicide.
  • Reality: Depression is a risk factor for suicide as it is often found in people who kill themselves. But this does not mean that depression is the cause of suicide. There are other risk factors and depression is not the most important one.
• Myth: Most people who commit suicide are successful on their first try.
  • Reality: The majority of those who commit suicide are known to have made at least one prior attempt to kill themselves.
• Myth: Life must be more stressful in densely populated states. People in densely populated states are more likely to commit suicide.
  • Reality:  People in densely populated states have lower suicide rates.
• Myth: More likely to be victims of racism and poverty, African Americans tend to commit suicide more often when compared to whites.
  • Reality: The rate of suicide is much higher among whites than blacks in the United States.
• Myth: Because of gender prejudice and discrimination, women are more likely than men to find their lives oppressive and consequently commit suicide.
  • Reality: Men are more likely than women to kill themselves.
• Myth: Unmarried are less likely to kill themselves.
  • Reality: The unmarried are more likely than the married to kill themselves.
• Myth: Suicide bombers are generally psychotic, or at least irrational, poor, and uneducated.
  • Reality: Suicide bombers generally come from relatively well off middle-class families. They are better educated than most of their countrymen, and are apparently rational enough to know that they can seriously threaten an enormously powerful nation.
• Myth: There are more suicides in the winter than in the spring because it is easier to  feel depressed in the cold, dark season and cheerful in the warm, sunny season.
  • Reality: There are fewer suicides in the winter or many more suicides in the spring.

Varieties of Suicidal Experiences

• Threatening Suicide
  •  Persons threaten suicide explicitly, directly, or clearly
  • Clearly want to live rather than die
  • They may commit suicide if threats do not achieve their objective
  • Those whose threats are heard will more likely refrain from killing themselves than those whose threats are ignored
• Attempting Suicide
  • Attempts are usually with the mood of not caring weather person lives or dies
  • Attempters are less explicit in communicating their suicidal feelings
  • Usually show others how depressed they are or tell others they cannot sleep, but generally avoid the word suicide
  • Somewhere between 14-53 percent of suicide attempters let others know of their intentions to die
  • When they convey their suicidal messages, others do not take it serious because of their vagueness
  • Methods include wrist cutting, large consumption of sleeping pills, or gas poisoning in the house or car
  • Most suicide attempts are carried out in setting that makes rescue possible
  • Suicide attempters are most likely to be women more than men
  • Suicide attempters are more likely to be young than old
  • Suicide attempters are more likely to abuse drugs

Committing Suicide

• About 2/3 who commit suicide are known to have made a prior attempt
• Most have openly or subtly communicated their suicidal thoughts
• Completes suicides comprise of three categories; suicide threateners who have failed to get what they want, suicide attempters who have not been rescued in time, and individuals determined to die
• The 5 suicide feelings
  • depressed
  • apologetic
  • vindictive
  • magnanimous
  • surrealistic

Self- Injurers

• Correlated to an area classified by deviant behavior
• Common reasons in engaging in self-harm
  • depression
  • past sexual abuse
  • fitting in
  • standing out
  • fitting in while standing out
  • emotional turmoil
  • anger/grief
  • dissatisfaction with others
  • peer pressure
  • identity crisis
  • narcissism
  • experiencing feeling of self-nurture as wounds heal
• 4 percent of adults practice some form of self-injury
• 23 percent of adolescents practice some form of self-injury
• Most public research for self-injury has developed from medical and psychiatric studies
• Term self-injury refers to practices such as intentional bone breaking, branding, burning, cutting, pricking, scratching, hair pulling, and skin picking

Inside the Social Structure and Organization of Cutting:

• The way in which forms of deviant behavior manifest (organized, maintained, transmitted, and conducted) allow the individual to readily identify and define these acts given their predisposition to be recognizable and predictable. (example: The type of tool used to cut oneself, like a blade or glass, is an example of how the act of cutting oneself is conducted; through observation of the ways in which people use different objects to inflict self harm, have helped sociologists categorize and define the complexity of cutting and the conditions in which it occurs.
• To understand cutting categories, sociologists utilize a theoretical typology of individual and loner deviance.
• Individual deviance is when an individual has knowledge of performing deviant acts by themselves or for themselves. Cutters, knowing they have the free will to act on deviant choices, does not mean they do not associate with other individual deviants who are like minded. (example: Skydivers or homeless)
• Individual deviants sharing a common form of deviance have support systems in which they are able to have conversations and engage amongst each other. There have been instances where individuals perform or demonstrate their deviant act to their support system or help one another commit this deviance act.
• Loner deviance, also known as loners, are individuals that typically isolate themselves socially and do not have reliable support networks to share their deviant choices and experiences. These loner deviants will then perform deviant acts on their own without any form of assisting or knowledge.
• Self cutters such as people with eating disorders, drug addicts in the medical professions, and child porngraphers are examples of loner deviance, they develop the deviant acts through trial and error.
• Theorists Adler and Adler (2005, 2008) state the self harming world of cutting is exponentially increasing because of the internet.
• Internet access has given cutters more access in finding one another, creating a strong deviant support system for them, normalizing and de-stigmatizing the act of cutting.

Cutting and Suicide

• Common misconception between cutting and suicide is that many assume that cutters want to self harm to attempt suicide in the future.
• Cutters in fact perform frequent extreme harm as a method to self heal rather than destroy.
• One study suggested that cutters and self harmers was a way to give themselves self restoration and coping. Suicide attempts by the self harming participants categorized it as complete self destruction.
• This does not mean that all cutters are not at risk of suicide, but it is important to note that self harming may be indications of depression and suicide.

Body Piercing

• Although media portrays body piercing as self injury, sociologists claim otherwise, saying body piercing is a method that individuals use to portray themselves to society how they want to be perceived as.
• Body piercing should instead be seen as using the flesh as a working canvas.
• Tattooing and body piercing is the most common form of body marking/modification.
• Media associates people who have body mods with negative traits, few studies have shown that people with BM has angry or aggressive, risky adolescent behavior, and thrill seeking traits.

Groups with Higher Suicide Rates

• Sociologists has relied mostly on suicide statistics gathered by the government, officials, and coroners, presented in the form of suicide rates, (number of suicides for every 100,000 people of a given population).
• Sociologists find this as unreliable data for 2 reasons
• Officials in different locations may all use different procedures compose their statistics.
• Consequently what is considered suicide in one place may be considered as natural, accidental, or homicidal death. (such as finding a dead body on a river, officials may report it as suicide when it is an accident, in short statistics made by officials are not as reliable because they may define suicide differently from other locations)
• Secondly, victims of suicide or their relatives may conceal evidence that the deaths were self inflicted. They would report the suicide as accidental death because it would be considered a disgrace for the victim’s family.  

Residents in Rural, Wide-Open Areas

• Most researchers have found a correlation between urbanization and suicide.
• Studies suggest that urban dwellers were more likely to kill themselves than rural dwellers since the nineteenth to twentieth century.
• Fast changing lifestyles in the city has weakened the individuals’ ties to others increasing potential consideration of suicide.
• Now, mass media and other institutions have spread to rural areas, causing higher rates of rural area suicides in most countries than ever before.
• In the United States, the highest rates of suicides are within the most rural states.
• People who live in rural areas in the united states tend to be more socially isolated, more dependent on themselves, and less likely to seek help from others when faced with times of personal crisis. Similarly these characteristics are linked with suicide.
• Another reason is because rural areas are predominantly inhabited by whites, in which they have the highest rate of suicides.

Whites

• Whites have a rate of about 21 suicides for every 100,000 whites, compared with only 13 for blacks.
• Within females, white females have a suicide rate of 5, compared with two for blacks.
• Whites have higher rates of suicide because they experience less social regulation.
• But whites of various younger age groups have consistently lower suicide rates than native americans.
• Whites by the age of 45 and older are more likely to kill themselves than native americans.
• Native american youths have the highest rate of all racial groups because the dominant white society has largely destroyed their proud culture, creating identity crisis, self doubt, leading young people to suicide.

The Less Religious

• Protestants have higher rates than Catholics, while catholics have higher rates than jews.
• The weaker the religious identity or the less religiously conservative people are, they higher the risk of suicide.
• The jewish suicide rate was high between 1900 to 1910 because they didn’t have a strong jewish identity.
• Congregational member church members have the highest rate of suicide.
• Some religious types do play a significant role in suicide.
• In the united states, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are more likely to kill themselves than christians.
• People who do not go to church are more likely to commit suicide.

Whites

• Men are more likely to commit suicide than females
• Given their greater freedom and success, men may find it harder to blame others when facing serious problems in life.
• Therefore they commit suicide as an aggression against themselves.
• The greater the sexual inequality, the greater the gender difference in suicide.
• Though females have the highest rates of attempted suicide than men, but fewer women succeed because they use less lethal methods.
• 66% of males commit suicide by firearms as their highest suicide method
• 35% of females commit suicide by poisoning themselves as their highest suicide method
• Most attempted suicides involve the use of less lethal methods such drug overdose and gas poisoning.
• In Asia, more women die from suicide than men, because they use deadly methods  such as drowning, hanging, or setting oneself on fire.
• Suicides done by Western men are mostly anomic, resulting from less social regulation
• Suicides done by asian women are fatalistic, resulting from too much regulation and less freedom, making them feel trapped such as being forced into arranged marriages.

The Divorced or Single

• There are many different suicide rates by marital status. Divorced people have the highest rate, married people have the lowest, and single/widows have intermediate rates.
• Married couples are immune to suicide, and people with children are immune to suicide more than people who don’t have children.
• The stronger ties we have with individuals, the less of a chance there is that suicide will occur.

Older People

• Suicide rates increase as people’s ages increase, younger ages have the lowest while older ages have the highest.
• Rates start to increase at the age of 64 and peaks in the oldest age group, but this only applies to white males. For others ages/ races, the rates remain low in old age.
• According to sociological explanation, suicide rates increase amongst older men because the social ties that have developed within marriages, children, work, et cetera, begin to diminish as they get older.
• Women are more likely to be widowed and living on their own, but their likelihood of suicide does not increase.
• Aging affects men because the lack of social ties threatens their identity of as a capable and worthy person.
• Women are less affected by the lack of social ties because they begin to see themselves as senior citizens, caring and religious people.

The Relatively Well-Off

• Sociologists have observed that wealthier people are more likely to kill themselves than a poor person because of their higher status and aspirations. They also tend to deal with more financial crisis.
• Jobs with low unemployment rates and high incomes have been found to have higher suicide rates that jobs that have higher unemployment and lower incomes. (Doctors have the highest suicide rate out of every profession.)
• Some studies have in fact found the opposite, that the poor have higher suicide rates than the rich.
• Unemployment is most likely to occur in a poor person’s life. Poverty can cause stress and depression, leading to suicide.
• There is no certainty that the rich are more suicidal than the poor or vice versa, but it is very likely that the rich are more affiliated to high suicide rates. Consistent evidence states that suicide rates are higher in wealthy societies than in poor ones.

A Social Profile of Suicide Bombers

• People have many opinions about the mentality of suicide bombers ever since the terrorist attack in 9/11. They are thought to be psychotic, poor and uneducated.
• Studies show that some suicide bombers who attempted to attack Israel shared the same social profile as the terrorists in 9/11. As well as the suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan who have targeted U.S troops.
• Most suicide bombers are young single males from well off middle class families. They tend to be more educated than other countrymen, and find it logical that the only legitimate and most powerful weapon against war is suicide bombing.
• The 9/11 terrorists didn’t consider themselves as terrorists, they considered themselves martyrs, which are people who kill themselves because of their religious beliefs. They’re family and friends also perceive them this way and express how proud they are of them.
• After an individual completes a suicide mission, their family is rewarded with a permanent pension from the organization that sponsored the bombing. The bombers also receive fame, where their photos are plastered and throughout the area.
• Suicide bombers also belief that by doing so, they earn a special place in heaven.
• Suicide attacks have always been very common, but did not start in the Middle East. It began in China when 72 pro-democracy revolutionaries sacrificed their lives in order to push the Chinese masses to overthrow the tyrannical government.

Situational Factors in Suicide

• We have analyzed different types of individuals with different characteristics that cause inclinations in suicide. We will now see how people who find themselves going through adolescence, going to college, being in the military, going to jail, contracting STD’s and being exposed to media influences.

Going Through Adolescence

• Almost 3,000 people between the ages 10-21 kill themselves annually and many students in high school consider it.
• Suicide ranks as a leading cause of death amongst young people. It comes after car accidents and homicide, but in many cases car accidents are intentional attempts of suicide.
• The large increase in youthful suicide is because of the fact that adolescence as a like crisis has gotten worse over the last 40 years.
• Young adults are often treated like children, and that results in them become fearful of not being able to do adult responsibilities accurately. This leads to rebellious behavior towards parents which results in the use of alcohol and drugs and reckless driving.
• Parent divorces and single parent families are very common, which take a toll on the child’s social integration and regulation, leading to an increase in suicide rates.
• Antidepressant drugs increase the risk of suicide amongst the youth. Parents have stated that their children committed suicide after taking antidepressants.
• Psychiatrists blame the actual suicide rather than the medications, but the only people who know the actual answer is that is the person doing it.

Going to College

• Over 1,000 students at Universities/ College institutes commit suicide
• Those College students that attend more prestigious universities are more likely to kill themselves because of greater pressure to achieve in an intensely competitive Atmosphere  
• When the Students grades drop to D’s and F’s this is when they begin to think of killing themselves
• Some warning signs that students give to their family and love once is when they begin to be troubled or depressed
• College life is relatively stressful, the greater stress experienced by students may be an important factor in their higher risk of suicide
• Something that makes it difficult to cope with the stress, namely, their lack of social ties or social support, which is a common problem among suicidal students   
• Students feel that since they attend a big institude that  one will notice or care when they are gone.

Joining the Military

• Many soldiers have died from suicide as from combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan combined
• Military suicide is now higher than that of civilians
• Stress of repeated combat deployments are attributes of these suicides, Evidence suggests otherwise
• Soldiers who have commited suicide which is about 80% only had 1 deployment or none at all
• Soldiers who kill themselves have not adequately adjusted to the stressfulness environment
• Majority of the suicides have occured after soldiers return home to the U.S.A
• Family problems have compounded the stress from having gone through horrible experiences of warfare
• Soldiers still are involved in family problems while still at war by keeping in communication with satellite phones
• Soldiers who have commited suicide were reluctant to seek for professional help to speak about their emotions because of a stigma
• Soldiers who are likely to commit suicide often keep their horrific experiences of war to themselves.
• There are many more factors that have been found to associate with military suicide

Being in Prison

• Relatively in common to find suicide in prison
• Suicide is the leading causes of death among prison inmates
• Prisoners are three to eight times more likely to kill themselves than Free citizens
• Those prisoners who commit suicide are primarily white, early 20’s, single, divorced, lack stable and supportive relationships
• Majority die by hanging
• Inmate commit suicide in local jails while awaiting trial/ sentencing than in state prisons after conviction or sentence
• Most of the suicides in have been charged with relatively minor crimes
• Death-row inmates who are imprisoned for life or waiting execution, also have a higher suicide rate than the general prison population

Being Stricken with AIDS

• Higher rates if suicide among people who are stricken with fatal diseases
• Aids patients are more likely than healthy people to kill themselves
• Yearly suicide rate of males AIDS patient in New York City is nearly 700 suicides for every 100,000 patients, compared with only 20 for men free of AIDS
• Explanation is that dying from AIDS produces an enormous sense of hopelessness while the social stigma attached to the disease brings the additional burden of social rejection and isolation
• People who are less sick and that are only infected with HIV, that have a chance of surviving are even more likely to kill themselves
• Takes them only one to four weeks after their HIV diagnosis for them to attempt suicide
• One reason why these less sick HIV- Infected patients are more suicidal than dying AIDS patients is because the tremendous tension resulting from the uncertainty about the outcome of HIV infection which may or may not lead to death
• Another reason is radical transformation from being a totally healthy person to being a seriously- Possibly deathly- Ill patient.    

Under the Media Influence

• There has been research where mass media influence on suicide
• Example: When famous people like the book novelist Ernest Hemingway, the movie star Marilyn Monroe and the grunge-rock star Kurt Cobain was widely publicized the nation’s suicide rate tends to go up
• This does not entail that celebrity suicide causes imitative suicide among all kinds of ordinary people.
• Imitative suicide is more likely to occur among the suicidally inclined persons with social characteristics that we have seen associated with high suicide rate
• Celebrities demonstrate the act of suicide as well as legitimize it as a way of solving a terrible life problem
• Also news about ordinary person’s suicide can also raise the country’s suicide rate
• Country music can also exercise a significant influence on suicide
• The greater the radio airtime given to country music the higher the white suicide rate is
• Country music conveys many suicide related themes such as marital strife and dissolution, alcohol abuse, financial strain, and exploitation at work   

A Global Perspective on Suicide

• The more developed the society, the higher its suicide rate
• People in the USA and other Western societies are usually more suicidal than people in the developing world.
• Western societies are higher in suicide rates because they are being more modern and individualistic, place greater importance on self-reliance so that distressed individuals are more likely to be left alone to fend for themselves
• Developing world, the fast-industrializing countries of China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore now have a higher suicide rates than do Western societies

Social Responses to Suicide

• Suicide can be common or rare and i depends to some degree on how society responds to it.
• African Americans have a relatively low suicide rate in the United States because their culture strongly condemns self-destruction
• Western Societies, suicide were treated as criminals to be punished today, suicides are considered victims to be sympathized with.

Survivors’ Reactions -Theory of Suicidal Process survivor’s reaction

• Survivors Reaction
  • When an individual commits suicide it is known that those left behind tend to feel guilty for various reasons Children who have lost parents do to parental suicide are caused severe trauma as they are also affected by the feeling of guilt
  • Difference between adults and children is that adults can neutralize the guilt and rationalize the guilt
  • They rationalize as they
    • regard themselves as having been a good person to the victim
    • they see the suicide as inevitable and regardless of how nice they were to the victim it              was still going to happen and
    • they consider suicide as a good thing as the deceased no longer must suffer
• Following a loved one’s suicide people will suffer from physical illness, emotional disturbance (headaches, migraines, depression, crying spells).
• Often last up to 6 months
• Relationships among family members are strengthened after a loved one’s suicide Support from friends and relatives is seen towards the survivors
• Emotional and health problems persist to those who continue to remember as think about the suicide
• A child’s suicide severely has an impact on the parent as they tend to feel totally responsible for the death
• Research shows that most people in the society will often blame the parent for their child’s suicide.

Advocating Suicide

• In the case of Nancy Cruzan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled her parents had the right to remove feeding tube that kept her alive in a state of come.
• Many have a viewpoint that terminally ill patients should be allowed to die with dignity rather than live in a deathlike or vegetative state.
• In Response Patient Self- Determination act was passed by congress, requiring hospitals to inform patients that they have the right to control treatment through living wills.
• This also allows patients to end their live by refusing life-sustaining treatments
• More than ½ of doctor’s support.
• Suicide from withholding treatment is different from physician assisted suicide
• Physician assisted suicide is when a doctor helps a terminally ill patient to die using a lethal drug
• 72% of Americans believe terminally ill people should have the right to die
• this option is illegal in all states.
• Oregon is the only state in which it is permitted, procedure has only helped 71 patients over the age of 18 from 1998-2005.
• The Netherlands has helped 4,000 patients including children with parental consent

Preventing Suicide

• Assisted suicide has alarmed right-to-life groups, as they considered every life to be sacred and it is morally wrong to end a life.
• Believe doctor assisted suicide will lead down euthanasia.
• They compare the idea of eliminating terminally ill patients, mentally changed, devalued members of society, and the poor to the elimination of Jews in Nazi Germany.
• Right to life groups try to implement doctors to stop doctor assisted suicide, while other groups discourage masses off distress suicidal people from killing themselves. Since 1950 suicide prevention centers have appeared in various countries, at least 200 exist in the U.S.
• phone calls are taken 24 hours, as there is some evidence that physiological methods presented can deal and ease the idea of a potential suicide.
• Regardless of amount of centers the rate for suicide has not decreased

Sociological Theories of Suicide

• explaining suicide can be categorized in two categories: psychiatric and sociological theories.
• Psychiatric generally infers there is something wrong with the person, whereas sociological assumes nothing is wrong
• Classical Durkheim theory of suicide is the most influential theory as it explains the two major causes of suicide.
• He reflects on social integration and social regulation
• Social integration includes voluntary attachment to a group or a society in which they are members of.
• Social regulation includes individuals being restrained, constrained, or controlled by a group or society.
• An individual with too much or too little social integration is more likely to commit suicide according to Durkheimian.
• 4 types of suicide, egoistic which is caused by too little social integration, altruistic suicide caused by too much integration, anomic suicide caused by too little social regulation, and fatalistic produced by too much regulation.

A Modern Durkheimian Theory

• Andrew Henry and James Short in 1954 developed a more persuasive approach to suicide.
• They define suicide as an aggressive act against oneself, caused by frustration with life.
• They then conclude that the self-directed aggression results from sociological, psychological, or economic factors.
• The sociological factor consists of a week relational system and a week external restrain, meaning individuals who are inadequately involved are more prone to suicide in addition to inadequate social regulation.
• He mentioned that one with higher status is more likely to commit suicide as they have less external regulations.
• In terms of psychological factor Henry and Short analyze that a strong superego resulting from internalization of harsh parental demands and disciple produces a high psychological propensity to suicide.
• The economical factor of suicide according to Henry and Short shows that during economic depression suicide rates rise and fall in times of prosperity.
• It was also depicted that higher status individuals are more likely to feel frustration and are more likely to kill themselves.

Phenomenological Theories

• It is specified that the validity of the Durkheim theories is depended on suicide statistics used to support the theories.
• Because theorist view statistics are reliable and consistent therefore the consider their theories reasonable valid.
• However phenomenological sociologists believe that statistics are unreliable and have depicted a different perspective on suicide.
• Phenomenological theories are constructivist and nonetiological therefore dealing with the meanings of suicide
• in contrast to Durkheimian theories, phenomenological theories look at suicide up close through actual suicide notes, interviews with surviving relatives, and suicide attempters

Theory of Suicidal Meanings

• According to Jack Douglas it is know that before a person commits suicide the individual attaches meanings to their own idea of suicidal acts, and therefore defer throughout society.
• He also believes our society has attached three meanings to suicide
  • Suicidal actions are meaningful 
  • Something is fundamentally wrong with the suicidal person’s suicidal situation
  • Something is fundamentally wrong with the suicidal person himself
• Douglas also believes there are four types of meanings to suicide
  • Suicide is a way of transporting the soul from this world to the other world
  • Suicide is a way of changing the view of oneself held by others in this world
  • Suicide is a way of achieving fellow-feelings
  • Suicide is a way of getting revenge

Theory of Suicidal Process

• Jerry Jacobs after carefully analyzing suicide notes and working closely with suicide attempters he classified the meanings of suicide as social prohibition against the act as suicide is frequently defined by our society as a violation of the sacred.
• He believes suicidal people must first overcome the social prohibition before attempting to take ones live.
• Meaning typically a suicidal individual must first overcome social prohibitions as followed
  • the person must find themselves faced with unexpected an intolerable and unsolvable problems
  • believe death is the only way to solve the problem
  • they define suicide as they feel they do not have the choice to not kill themselves, therefore relieving the feel of guilt and responsibility
  • finally, they pray to god for forgiveness or leave a not so they make sure they will not be punished in the after life
  • Jacobs observations have been a great contribution in understanding the process of suicide and patterns.