Call to mitigate suicide rate:

It’s everybody’s business!

By Lionel WIJESIRI

Suicide has stolen lives around the world across the centuries. Meanings attributed to suicide and notions of what to do about it have varied with time and place, but suicide has continued to exact a relentless toll. There are few who escape being touched by the tragedy of suicide in their lifetimes; those who lose someone close as a result of suicide experience an emotional trauma that never departs.

Young people march to highlight World Suicide Prevention Day.

Police made a shocking disclosure recently that 1,778 suicides have taken place in Sri Lanka so far this year. The suicide rate has been relatively steady in our country over the past. According to police data, 3,864 people committed suicide in 2010 while last year it was 3,770.

Suicide and self-harm affect people of all ages, young and old, male and female. It affects their families, friends and communities. Every suicide is a tragedy, a life and family member lost. For those left behind, suicide leaves a wound that does not easily heal.

Social problem

First, suicide should be understood as a social problem. The famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim defined suicide as “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.” Durkheim believed that social forces would affect the suicide rate. These forces became his independent variables. (An independent variable is thought to be the cause or explanation of one or more dependent variables - a factor which explains changes in the dependent variable).

Durkheim’s major independent variables were religious affiliation, marital status, military or civilian status and economic conditions (boom, bust, or stability). His data came from government records which included information about all his variables. He could thus analyse these records statistically.

Durkheim’s analysis led him to identify four distinct patterns of suicide. The three patterns most commonly referred to are egoistic, altruistic and anomic suicide.

Egoistic suicide is committed by people who are not strongly supported by members in a cohesive social group. As outsiders, they depend more on themselves than on group goals and rules of conduct to sustain themselves. In times of stress, they feel isolated and helpless.

Altruistic suicide is carried out by people who are deeply committed to group norms and goals and who see their own lives as unimportant. These involve dying for a cause. Anomic suicide is committed by people when society is in crisis or rapid change. In such times, customary norms may weaken or break down. With no clear standards of behaviour to guide them, many people become confused, their goals lose meaning, and life seems aimless.

Durkheim’s theory is that suicide is related to the links people have with social groups. If commitment is less towards groups and group norms, it is likely to produce egoistic suicide. Too much is likely to produce altruistic suicide. Commitment shaken by rapid social change is likely to increase the chances of anomic suicide.

This sociological explanation does not oppose a psychological view of suicide. The sociological explanation can point out the social forces that will increase a person’s probability of committing suicide. This theory cannot predict exactly who will actually commit suicide. For that answer, the psychologist’s study of individual behaviour would be more useful. Durkheim’s study has consistently been shown to be valid and reliable.

Individual aspirations

Durkheim says that suicide is not simply an individual act, but a product of social forces external to the individual. Even poverty - the most general cause of suicide, as presented by media and politicians - has been rebutted by him. He argues that the greater the integration of individuals within the social group, the less likely they are to commit suicide.

Durkheim makes sense to the writer. Survey reports reveal that developed countries have more suicides than the more backward. Durkheim presented a systematic theory of suicide mortality, consisting of several elements, one being the claim that the level of suicide in a society correlates with the level of societal regulation, i.e. the regulation, on the part of society, of individual goals and aspirations. This regulation originates in social morality, as shared by and superior to the individual members of society.

It sets limits on the individual’s aspirations and desires and prescribes appropriate and attainable goals for individuals in different social positions and with varying resources and opportunities.

Society in crisis

In Durkheim’s opinion, human needs, in contrast to animals’, exceed the purely physical, and their number or form cannot be absolutely determined. As a result, the satisfaction of needs is always uncertain and arbitrary. Thus, if they were dependent only on individual aspirations, the individuals’ desires and goals would always be unattainable, and the individual would be in a perpetual state of disappointment and dissatisfaction.

However, in a normal society as envisaged by Durkheim, this state of affairs is avoided by societal regulation of both the desirable goals and the means of attaining them. This encourages the individual to reach a realistic contentment with his/her lot, a fate that he/she can try to improve by working in conformity with the regulation. As a result, the individual will “love what he has and not fixate on what he lacks”.

When a society is in crisis, or affected by abrupt change, it will sometimes become incapable of exercising its regulative influence on individual needs. When life conditions change, the standards according to which needs are regulated cannot remain the same. Nor can a new standard be immediately implemented.

Thus, for a time, the limits of what is possible, just, and legitimate in relation to individual needs will be unknown. This will remain uncertain and individual needs, passions, and aspirations would be unlimited and uncontrolled.

At societal level, it is characterised by deficient regulation, at individual level, by constant disappointments caused by unattainable goals and unmet aspirations. According to Durkheim, a society in a state of anomie will experience a great increase, for that location and time, of a specific type of suicide which he terms anomic.

In Durkheim’s opinion, the economic sector was the most visible social sphere in which anomic imbalances could be found. Interested as he was in a possible correlationship between economic changes and levels of suicide mortality, he could show how disruptions or changes in the economy - upswings, recessions or reforms - were associated with increases in suicide levels.

Durkheim did not see the origins of anomie as solely economic. Change in the family structure was another potential source, as the higher suicide rates among divorced men indicated. Divorce brought about a state of disequilibrium, interrupting the regulative functions of marriage, the regulation of “the life of passions”.

Ways of coping

The fact that sharp increases in suicide rates seem to have been rather common in many changing societies clearly demonstrates the accuracy of Durkheim’s description of suicide as a social phenomenon.

In a study of regional variations in suicide mortality conducted in 2010, a group of multinational sociologists found that the strongest preventer of suicide mortality levels was the availability of “coping resources” in terms of opportunities to fight a declining living standard by turning to other economic alternatives, legal or illegal. Suicide rates were found to be higher in countries where the population lacked such opportunities.

However, societal changes are complex phenomena, and determining the potential trigger for increases in suicide levels is complicated. In the end, the result will most probably reflect the political choice of perspective.

Modern sociologists also suggest that the effect of societal change on suicide levels ultimately depends on the cultural context where it occurs. One might further hypothesise that suicide, as a way of coping with societal change or, alternatively, as a result of such change, is more readily available in some cultures.

If other ways of coping are available, there may be less of a tendency to choose suicide. The development of means of coping could be an ingredient in the adaptation to societal change.