CHAPTER 7

Suicide and Self-Harm

Alex Thio, Jim Taylor & Martin Schwartz, Deviant Behavior (12th ed.)
SUICIDE
 SUICIDE AS SOCIAL PHENOMENON
• Depression is a risk factor, but it is not the most predictive factor. So, by itself,
depression does not directly cause suicide.

• Most depressed people do not kill themselves.

• The inability to cope with depression, linked with certain social forces and
conditions, social isolation, and lack of social support are factors.

• Rates differ considerably by race, age, and gender.

• This means that sociological factors are more predictive of suicide than
psychological ones.
 THEORIES OF SELF-HARM
• Psychiatric theories

?
• Mental illness is the cause of suicide

• Focus is mainly on the individual

• Sociological theories

• Focus is on society and social forces

• What groups of people tend to experience psychological problems to a greater degree

than others, and what social forces cause some of them to commit suicide?
A POSITIVIST THEORY OF
SUICIDE
 SUICIDE
• Threatening suicide
• Depressed

• Attempting suicide
• Apologetic

• Committing suicide
• Vindictive

• “Atonement” Suicide

• Magnanimous

• Surrealistic
• Types of suicidal feelings
 SUICIDE STATISTICS
• Statistics on suicide can be unreliable, but some group patterns exist

• Urban vs. rural suicide rates

• Urban suicides: conflicting social norms, fast-changing lifestyles, rapid social

development or change (anomic)

• Rural suicides: spread of mass media and other institutions to rural areas has
reduced the differences between the older, close-knit rural communal life and the
modern isolation and individualization of urban life (egoistic)
 SUICIDE RATES BY STATE
State Suicides per Percent Population per
100,000 Rural Square Mile
Residents
Wyoming 28 35.2 5.8
Alaska 26.9 34.0 1.2
Montana 25.3 44.1 6.8
New Mexico 23.7 22.6 17.0
Utah 22.4 9.4 33.6
Average 25.3 29.1 12.88
Connecticut 9.9 12.0 738.1
Massachusetts 8.9 8.0 839.4
Maryland 8.8 12.8 594.8
New Jersey 8.3 5.3 1,195.5
New York 7.8 12.1 411.2
Average 8.7 10.0 755.8
Sources: Based on U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Suicide Mortality, 2015; United States Census Bureau, 2011.
 SUICIDE STATISTICS
• In the U.S., whites are more likely to commit suicide than any other racial
group, with the exception of (younger) Native Americans.

• Whites experience less social regulation and more individual freedom, which
increases likelihood of anomic suicide.

• The more religious a person is, the less likely they will commit suicide,
regardless of what religion the person practices.

• Males have much higher rates of suicide than females, with the exception
of women in strictly patriarchal societies such as rural China and rural India.
 SUICIDE STATISTICS
• Divorced people have the highest rates of suicide, followed by single,
unmarried people without children and the widowed (especially men)

• Older, white males are a high risk for egoistic suicide

 SUICIDE STATISTICS
• Adolescents and young adults: rates are still lower than older white
males, but have increased sharply in recent decades

• Among college students, those who attend prestigious universities are

more at risk due to pressure to perform and intensely competitive
atmosphere

• Social class

• Findings vary
SELF-HARM
 SELF-INJURERS
• Researchers estimate that 4% of adults and 23% of adolescents engage
in self-harming behaviors, such as:

• Cutting, branding, hair pulling, skin picking, bone-breaking, branding, burning

• Reasons are numerous and include:

• Depression, past sexual abuse, fitting in or standing out, cathartic release,

emotional turmoil, anger, grief, peer pressure, identity crisis, narcissism, self-
loathing, to feel euphoric, self-nurturing as wounds heal
 CUTTERS
• Cutters are a varied group with many different and often complex reasons
for their self-cutting.

• “Loners”

• “Individual”

• Destigmatization efforts

• Some cutters seek support to quit, while others seek support and
understanding from like-minded others who use cutting as a “type of life
maintenance” (p. 149).
SOCIAL ORIGINS OF
BODY MODIFICATION
 MODERN BODY MODIFICATION
• Today, most body modification is seen as:

• Individual expression

• An art form – creative use of body as canvas “body project”

• Cathartic release and healing

• Telling a story about a person’s life

• An expression of grief or other strong emotions

• Reclaiming control after feeling helpless or powerless

 “PRO-ANA” AND FAT ACCEPTANCE
• Pro-ana (pro-anorexia) and fat acceptance groups advocate to remove
stigma from eating disorders and provide social support and cyber-
community for members.

• Many, including some researchers, view these individuals as self-injurers, and

therefore deviant.

• In any case, community seems to help reduce the isolation and provide social
support networks.
 SUICIDE BOMBERS
• Are not typically mentally ill, as most people assume. They tend to:

• Come from relatively well-off, middle-class families

• Have strong loyalty to the group and its goals

• Are better educated than most of their peers

• Conclude from rational calculation that conventional warfare would not work

• Be viewed by family and friends as heroes

 TOTAL INSTITUTIONS
• Soldiers are at high risk of suicide

• Prisoners

• Most commonly commit suicide during the early stages of their imprisonment
– due to “radical transformation” of their situation and fear of other prisoners
and imprisonment itself.

• Prison suicides are predominantly white, male, and in their 20s

 ILLNESS, IMMIGRATION
• Suicides among AIDS patients most often occur when newly diagnosed.

• Experiencing “radical transformation” from healthy to sick or terminally ill person

• Foreign-born Latinos:

• Rates are higher than U.S. born, again due to “radical transformation” of life in
trying to assimilate to a new culture (anomic)

• Most are Catholic, and rapid involvement in supportive church community can reduce
likelihood of suicide.
 MEDIA INFLUENCE
• Suicide rates increase after highly-publicized suicides of celebrities or
depictions of suicides in media (e.g., popular films or television shows)

• Some people see them as role models, legitimating suicide

 GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
• Generally, the more developed a society, the higher the suicide rate.

• More social isolation, less traditional community

• More emphasis on independence, self-reliance

• Rapidly developing countries also have higher rates:

• Increases in problems like unemployment, poverty, divorce, alcohol and drug use

• Disruptions in traditional social life

• Reduction in social support

 ASSISTED SUICIDE
• Two types of assisted suicide:

• Withholding of life-sustaining treatment for terminally ill, which is legal

through Patient Self-Determination Act and living wills.

• Physician-assisted suicide, which is when a doctor prescribes a lethal drug

for terminally-ill patients to use on themselves.
 PREVENTING SUICIDE
• Suicide prevention centers and hotlines are mainly helpful to suicide
threateners or attempters, who are more likely to be female and younger.

• Doesn’t seem to deter people motivated who are highly motivated to commit
suicide, especially older white males.

• Sociologists argue that this relative lack of effectiveness is because such

hotlines focus on individual problems and not larger social issues.
 MODERN DURKHEIMIAN THEORY
• Defines suicide as act of aggression against the self, due to one’s
frustration with life (Henry and Short 1954). Modern theory combines
three factors:

1. Sociological

2. Psychological

3. Economic

• Research largely supports this updated theory.

 PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY
• Phenomenologists criticize positivist suicide theories for relying too heavily on
unreliable statistics, and for imposing their own interpretations on the data to
determine causes.

• Douglas’ (1967) theory of suicidal meanings:

1. “Suicide is a way of transporting the soul from this world to the other world.”

2. “Suicide is a way of changing the view of oneself held by others in this world.”

3. “Suicide is a way of achieving fellow-feeling.”

4. “Suicide is a way of getting revenge.”