Social Trauma and Suicide in Historical Perspective
Abstract
Economic depression and unemployment in the West have been and continue to be seen as responsible for periodic increases in suicide rates. This belief has been reinforced by investigations and media reports going back to the mid-nineteenth century. The evidence sustaining this claim is based on official statistics of completed suicides, despite the overwhelming evidence of their lack of reliability. Based on questionable methods and classifications, researchers continue to insist that individual behaviors and motives can be revealed through an examination of wider social, especially economic forces. This paper examines the persistence of these beliefs and their impact on public policy since Durkheim. Building on the often cited but rarely read work of Jack Douglas (Social Meanings of Suicide), I suggest an alternative approach to the etiology of suicide that relies on social meaning and that challenges the essentialist assumptions that human aspirations, successes, and failures have the same meaning and definition everywhere and that assumes cultural uniformity of the motives and the understanding of suicide among different genders, ethnicities, and classes.
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