SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR AND SOCIOCULTURAL ENABLERS: A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
By: Temidayo Jacob
Tags: Suicide Enabler, Suicide Awareness, Suicide, Research, Sociology

SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR AND SOCIOCULTURAL ENABLERS: A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Approximately 1 million people worldwide die by suicide making it one of the leading causes of death

Suicide has become a major public health problem of this century. The rate at which people commit suicide these days is very alarming, such that there has been an increase in the rate at which mental illness is discussed with little or no significant impact in curbing the spate of self-inflected mortality. This epidemic is no peculiar to Nigeria alone, it is a global social problem which accounts for the 10th leading cause of death worldwide. According to a World Health Organization report, approximately 1 million people worldwide die by suicide making it one of the leading causes of death. In the US, over 30,000 people die as a result of suicide, while the economic impact of suicide is $11.8 billion per year4. There may not be readily available documented record of suicide in Nigeria at the moment, the recent death of a university undergraduate who announced his intention to take his own life, including other reported suicides on social media, has drawn attention to suicidal ideation and behavior among Nigerans irrespective of class, gender, age, religion or ideology. As such, it is imperative that proactive interventions are implemented in order to curb this growing social problem.

It is no doubt that suicide is often considered to be a psychological disorder, hence extensive research on understanding psychological triggers responsible for suicidal behavior. Mental illness has been linked with an increased risk of suicide – with estimates suggesting up to 90% of individuals who take their own life suffer from some type of psychiatric disorder5. While the psychological viewpoint is important in understanding individual factors attributed to suicidal behavior6, approaching suicidal behavior from a sociological perspective is very crucial in understanding risk factors for suicide beyond mental illness. The case for a sociological perspective into understanding suicidal behavior is better appreciated when we understand that individuals interact in a social system, as a result, social expectations and conflcits could become enablers for suicidal behavior.

In the view of this, we will look at some terms that explain societal influence on suicide: A copycat suicide is described as the emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to depictions of the original suicide on social media or any other media. The original suicide serves as a trigger, in the absence of protective measures, for the next suicide by a susceptible person. This is referred to as suicide contagion. They usually spread through a school system, through a community, or in terms of a celebrity suicide wave, nationally. This is known as suicide cluster. Suicide clusters are usually caused by the social enlightenment of suicide-related behaviors.

According to Wikipedia, Suicide, from Latin "suicidium", is "the act of taking one’s own life". There are different ways one can view suicide. For instance, attempted suicide or non-fatal suicidal behavior is self-injury with the desire to end one’s life that does not result in death. Assisted suicide is when one individual helps another bring about their own death indirectly via providing either advice or the means to the end. This is in contrast to euthanasia, where another person takes a more active role in bringing about a person’s death. Suicidal ideation is thoughts of putting an end to one’s life but not taking any active efforts to do so. In a murder-suicide (or homicide-suicide), the individual aims at taking the life of others at the same time. A special case of this is extended suicide, where the murder is motivated by seeing the murdered persons as an extension of their self.

Suicide is described as the deliberate taking of one’s own life. This could be done by hanging, intake of pesticide/insecticide, poisoning, use of firearms etc. Factors identified as reason for suicide include: mental illness, exposure to family history of mental illness or suicide, physical/sexual abuse, losses, aggressive behavior, lack of social support/social isolation, family disorganization, access to arms like guns, knives, etc., difficulties in dealing with sexual orientation/identity, physical illness, traumatic event, substance abuse, guilt/shame, etc. Whenever suicide is about to occur, there are some warning signs which the individual may give to those around him/her. These signs, while not same for every situation, include: preoccupation with death, intense sadness and/or hopelessness, withdrawal from important activities, social withdrawal from family, friends, sports, etc., excessive substance abuse, sleep disturbance, risky behavior, lack of energy, obsession with overthinking, concentration problems, etc.

Views on suicide have been influenced by broad existential themes such as religion, honor, and the meaning of life. The Abrahamic religions traditionally consider suicide as an offense towards God, due to the belief in the sanctity of life. During the samurai era in Japan, a form of suicide known as seppuku (harakiri) was respected as a means of making up for failure or as a form of protest. Sati, a practice outlawed by the British Raj, expected the Indian widow to kill herself on her husband’s funeral fire, either willingly or under pressure from her family and society. Among the Yorubas of West Africa, suicide could serve the purpose of preventing capture during war or ending a sense of shame or suffering; hence the adage, ikú yá ju èsín lọ, translated to mean “death is preferred to shame” Suicide and attempted suicide, while previously illegal, are no longer so in most Western countries. It remains a criminal offense in many countries. In the 20th and 21st centuries, suicide has been used on rare occasions as a form of protest, call for change or revolution. Kamikaze and suicide bombings have been used as a military or terrorist tactic.

Over the years, sociologists have tried to put forward various explanations for why a person may want to or may commit suicide. Within sociology, there are different perspectives on suicide and its causes. These perspectives come from two main methodologies which are Positivists who believe that sociology is a science and they should aim to make causal laws on suicide rates, compared to Interpretivists who believe that they should look for meaning behind happenings and certain individuals experiences before the suicide. There are other perspectives that provide insights into understanding suicidal behaviors. For the sake of this work, we will be looking at the functionalist perspective and symbolic interactionist perspective.

The functionalist perspective is associated with seeing things in a way that emphasizes how parts of society are assembled to preserve itself, this is called functionalism. One of the first sociologists to view suicide in this perspective was Emile Durkheim. He looked at suicide data from different countries to find the underlying social factors responsible for suicidal behavior. Emile Durkheim, who is known as the father of modern Sociology, wrote extensively and carried out a research on suicide in different societies. This is to see the relationship, differences and get a good and understandable definition of suicide.

Durkheim’s initial effort at the common definition of suicide indeed followed common usage, which is "suicide is any death which is the immediate or eventual result of a positive (e.g., shooting oneself) or negative (e.g., refusing to eat) act accomplished by the victim himself"8. However, Durkheim immediately ran into difficulties, for this definition failed to distinguish between two very different types of death: the victim of hallucination who drinks insecticide thinking it was drug, and the sane individual who does the same thing knowing that it will lead to his death. The obvious solution (which was to restrict the definition of suicide to actions intended to have this result) was unacceptable to Durkheim for at least two reasons.

The distinctive characteristic of suicide, therefore, is not that the act is performed intentionally, rather that it is performed advisedly -- the agent knows that death will be the result of his/her act, regardless of whether or not death is the goal. Hence Durkheim’s definition: Suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, with the knowledge of the outcome of the act.

Durkheim discovered and gave four types of suicide. They include:

Egoistic suicide : This is suicide caused by low level of integration in the society.

: This is suicide caused by low level of integration in the society. Altruistic suicide : This is suicide caused by high level of integration in the society.

: This is suicide caused by high level of integration in the society. Anomic suicide : This is suicide caused by low level of regulation in the society.

: This is suicide caused by low level of regulation in the society. Fatalistic suicide: This is suicide caused by high level of regulation in the society.

One type of suicide that gets attempted is altruistic. This occurs when there is an overbearing amount of expectation from society on a person by a social force; trying to get cultural approval or benefits from social order. Suicide bombers do this for religious and political reasons, also for the support of one’s society. These can also occur in a culture when an elderly reaches a certain age they commit suicide for their people and because they feel like they hit the final level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization. Another form of suicide that gets attempted is egoistic. Egoistic suicide is when a person feels so detached from society. The chances for egoistic suicide increase when bonds with family, the community, and work that ties to the society are weakened. It can also escalate when a person reaches retirement or a loved one passes away.

Anomic suicide is due to certain breakdown of social balance whereby individuals struggle to cope with sudden experiences such as loss or winning lottery. This type of view is important to understand how social media play an important role in suicidal ideation and behavior. The assumption that the social media offer freedom to express oneself often lead to low regulation, thereby triggering moral confusion and lack of direction or need for social cohesion and inclusion. In contrast, fatalistic suicide as been associated with a high level of social regulation, very akin to oppression and repression of individual freedom and expression. For instance, there is a higher rate of suicidal behavior among non-heterosexuals when compared with heterosexuals.

As humans, our definition of things differs in almost every aspect of life. When we speak about suicide, in our minds, the possibility of the death is open, and with that, the motives that possibly can drive us to the imperious thought of ending life in a "voluntary" way. There will always be triggers such as desperation, distress, isolation, lack of sense of life, hopelessness, misery, frustration and many other meanings related to fatality. However, it would not be appropriate to think about them as the only causative factors responsible for committing suicide; thus, it is appropriate to mention that suicide could be incited by other kind of factors including ideological preservation, desire for martyrdom, a sense of heroism, a sense of responsibility (like a mother who takes bullet for a child, knowing that her action will lead to death), a sense of stardom (taking one’s life at the peak of success to remain relevant in the minds of others), death by cop, etc.

Symbolic Interactionism is associated with the study of human behaviour and life of groups. It offers a perspective on society based on three fundamental premises, which are useful in exploring suicidal behavior. Firstly, a person operates depending on the meaning that things have for him/her. It can be said that suicide has a different meaning for every person; for them who commit it, and also for those that only think about it as distant possibility. Secondly, this meaning has its origins from interaction with others within a society. Therefore, suicide is not just an individual construct, it is a social concept, with its consequential meaning immersed in a world that surrounds the subject who commits the action. This idea of conceptualized meaning is significant in understanding those who have strongly called for a semantic reevaluation of how language is used to describe suicide. There are some who believe that this statement – “s/he committed suicide” is misplaced and deliberately stigmatizes those who commit suicide. The argument is that the person who commits suicide does not have a control of the action. Therefore, a similarity between death by suicide and death as a result of an illness has often been touted to shift focus on suicide as a product of an illness, often mental. While the sentiment is understood, however, such semantic manipulation to shift the responsibility for the action committed by the subject to the act itself offers a premise for confusion and possible conflict. A third symbolist interactionist perspective is that meanings changed as a result of day to day social interaction with other people and with the primary, secondary and tertiary groups which we belong to in the society.

The core of symbolic interactionist perspective assumes that the meaning of suicide to one person can be different to that of the other. For instance, there are two different popular hashtags used in connection with suicide on social media; with one focusing on suicide as wrong while the other encourages it. They are: #SuicideIsNotAnOption and #SuicideIsBravery.

In conclusion, we can see that suicidal behavior is not only a psychological phenomenon. There are sociological factors that contribute to suicidal behavior including the act itself. The focus of this essay has been to draw attention to the social factors that could play significant role in understanding suicidal behavior, without diminishing mental illnesses. The position emphasized here is that social interactions with others are implicated in suicidal tendencies. This is expected as no individual is an island to himself or herself. Building coping skills to effectively deal with social pressures may be the very first step in preventing suicidal ideation and eventual behavior. Also, creating meaningful relationship within a manageable network of friends and family is important in helping people to deal with suicidal triggers. Other preventative measures include limiting access to methods of suicide—such as firearms, drugs, and poisons; treating mental disorders and substance misuse; proper media reporting of suicide; and improving economic conditions.