2. Mental Illness & suicide

Question 1

A03 of Durkheim( suicide)

Answer 1

Interactionists reject Durkheim’s positivist approach & reliance of official statistics. They argue that to understand suicide we must study its meanings for those who choose to kill themselves.

Question 1

Outline Suicide (durkheim)

Answer 1

Durkheim studied suicide with the aim of showing that sociology was a science.
Using official statistics he claimed to have discovered the cause of suicide in how effectively society integrated individuals & regulate their behavior.

Question 2

Outline Douglas’s view on meaning of suicide

Douglas

Answer 2

Douglas takes interactionist approach to suicide - argues official statistics are socially constructed and tell us about the activity of the people who construct them such as police
( in case of crime) & coroners (in case of suicide) rather than real rate of crime or suicide

Whether a death is labelled as a suicide depends on the interactions and negotiations between social actors (doctors, the coroner, family).
Statistics therefore tell us nothing about the meaning behind an individual’s decision to commit suicide.

Douglas-Qualitative research methods such as analysis of suicide notes , unstructured interviews with deceased friends & relatives allow us to get behind the labels coroners attach to death & discover their true meanings.