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Social integration and suicide: Denmark, 1906–2006
Abstract
Research on the relationship between social integration and suicide rates has neglected a historical perspective. Analyses are often based on relatively short time periods where there may not be enough variation in integration to affect the national suicide rate, or where overall integration levels are not low enough to buttress a link between a specific index of low integration, such as divorce, and suicide. The present investigation contributes to the literature by testing a hypothesis on domestic integration and suicide over a century, the longest period studied to date, encompassing periods of low and high overall social integration, and emergent risk and protective factors. Data are available for core variables for Denmark, 1906–2006. Annual data include those on suicide, and indicators of integration (divorces, births, marriages), as well as for economic strain (unemployment) and time trends. A log linear Poisson model is estimated, which explores the central divorce–suicide relationship under controls for confounders. Controlling for confounders, a one percent increase in divorce increases male suicides by 0.52% and female suicides by 1.12%. As anticipated, marriages decrease suicide: a one percent increase in marriages reduces suicide by 0.77% for men and by 0.63% for women. The trend in divorce, in particular, offers accurate predictions of suicide throughout the century. The relationship between divorce and suicide over a century is robust. The results offer the strongest support to date in support of a social integration model based on long term historical data on suicide and divorce.
... Since the pioneering work of Durkheim (1897Durkheim ( /1966, two of society's core social institutions, the family and religion, have been the subject of much sociological research on suicide (e.g., Agerbo, 2005;Agerbo et al., 2011;Andres et al., 2010;Cook, 2019;Denney, 2010;Kleinman and Liu, 2014;Lenzi et al., 2012;Maki and Martikainen, 2009;Stack, 1982;Stack, 2000b;Stack and Scourfield, 2015;Stack and Laubepin, 2019;Wray et al., 2011;Wu et al., 2015;Yip et al., 2012). These institutions are related in that they both can function to combat a possible human tendency towards egoism or self-involvement (Durkheim, 1897(Durkheim, /1966. ...
... The study that inspects the longest span of time, 1906-2006, a hundred years, in Denmark found a link between divorce and suicide rates. Controlling for confounders, a 1% increase in the divorce rate predicted a rise of 0.52% in male and a 1.12% rise in female suicide rates (Agerbo et al., 2011). ...
... Research, especially on the concrete individual level, has tended to continue to find that marriage, parenting and religiousness often tend to function to prevent suicides (Agerbo, 2005;Agerbo et al., 2011;Andres et al., 2010;Cook, 2019;Denney, 2010;Kleinman and Liu, 2014;Lenzi et al., 2012;Maki and Martikainen, 2009;Stack, 1982;Stack, 2000b;Stack and Scourfield, 2015;Stack and Laubepin, 2019;Wray et al., 2011;Wu et al., 2015;Yip et al., 2012). In both cases, research done using samples at the concrete level of the individual are more likely to strongly support the protective nature of these social factors than work done at the aggregate level where the samples are often heterogeneous such as cites, states, and whole nations. ...
This review summarizes recent research in four environmental areas affecting risk of deaths by suicide. Politically, the weight of the evidence suggests that laws increasing social welfare expenditures and other policies assisting persons with low incomes (e.g., minimum wage) tend to lower suicide rates. Other legal changes such as those restricting firearms and alcohol availability can also prevent suicides. The social institutions of marriage, as well as parenting, continue to serve as protective factors against suicide, although the degree of protection is often gendered. Religiousness tends to be inversely associated with suicide deaths at the individual level of analysis, but the mediators need exploration to determine what accounts for the association: social support, better mental health, better physical health, less divorce, or other covariates. Cultural definitions of the traditional male role (e.g., breadwinner culture) continue to help explain the high male to female suicide ratio. New work on the "culture of suicide" shows promise. The degree of approval of suicide is sometimes the single most important factor in predicting suicide. At the individual level of analysis, two of the strongest predictors of suicide are economic ones: unemployment and low socio-economic status. Attention is drawn to enhancing the minimum wage as a policy known to lower state suicide rates. Limitations of research include model mis-specification, conflicting results especially when ecological data are employed, and a need for more research exploring moderators of established patterns such as that between religiousness and suicide.
... W licznych analizach stwierdzono dodatnią korelację współczynnika samobójstw ze współczynnikiem rozwodów zarówno u kobiet, jak i u mężczyzn [19,20]. Z badań przeprowadzonych w Danii, obejmujących analizą lata 1906-2006, wynika, że przy wzroście liczby rozwodów o 1% samobójstwa wśród mężczyzn rosną o 0,52%, a wśród kobiet o 1,12% [21]. W badaniach amerykańskich wykazano, że ryzyko śmierci samobójczej u rozwiedzionych mężczyzn było dwukrotnie większe niż u mężczyzn żonatych, podczas gdy dla kobiet nie stwierdzono takiej zależności [22]. ...
... Z kolei w badaniu duńskim, w którym poddano analizie lata 1906-2006, ujawniono ochronny wpływ małżeństwa zarówno w grupie kobiet, jak i mężczyzn. Jednoprocentowy wzrost liczby małżeństw powoduje zmniejszenie liczby samobójstw o 0,77% dla mężczyzn i o 0,63% dla kobiet [21]. Możliwe jednak, że ochronny efekt małżeństwa jest uwarunkowany kulturowo: jak wskazują badania z Chin, stres związany z życiem rodzinnym może podwyższać ryzyko samobójstwa wśród zamężnych kobiet [30]. ...
... Pozostawanie w związku małżeńskim ma wartość protekcyjną podczas oceny indywidualnego ryzyka samobójstwa [21]. Badania pokazują ciekawe zjawisko -w ujęciu społecznym wskaźnik małżeństw nie zawsze wpływa na wskaźnik samobójstw [29] lub wpływa tylko na wskaźniki samobójstw u mężczyzn [19]. ...
Aim:
The aim of the paper was to: (1) present economic, socio-demographic and other indicators related to suicide, useful from the perspective of social integration theory, and (2) identify new indicators of special importance to contemporary Poland.
Method:
A narrative literature review on the sociological approach to suicide was undertaken by searching MEDLINE/PubMed, PsycINFO, Google Scholar databases using the following key words: suicide, suicide risk factors, Durkheim's theory of suicide, integration and disintegration of society, sociodemographic factors, economic factors, religion, and the time descriptors: 2000-2017.
Results:
Suicide risk was analyzed in relation to: family integration (including the rates of divorce, marriage, fertility, and women's participation in the labour market); economy (including the unemployment rate, gross domestic product per capita, Gini social inequality index, and social welfare indicators); social issues (including the indicators of the healthcare system quality, the rates of alcohol consumption per capita and migration); religion (including the parameters of conventional religiosity, Gallup index, and percentage of religious books). The issues relevant for Poland were addressed while discussing Balanced Development Index in economic aspect, and dominicantes and communicantes rates in religious aspect.
Conclusions:
This literature review may be useful in the assessment of suicide risk when designing suicide prevention programs and for mental health clinicians in their daily practice.
... Стремлением или целью могут выступать поступление в университет, идеальный романтический партнер, политическое убеждение, к которому тяготеет человек, и прочее. Развод может стать источником напряжения, особенно для того, с кем разводятся [12]. Если реальность далека от стремлений, человек переживает сильное напряжение. ...
... When an individual living in the United States expects to be very rich or at least moderately successful as other Americans do, but in reality the means to achieve the goal is not equally available to the person because of his/her social status or any other reasons, the person tends to be criminal. Aspirations or goals can be a college a person aims to get in, an ideal girl a boy wants to marry, and a political cause a person strives for, etc. Divorce can be a source of strain, especially for the party who was divorced [12]. If the reality is far from the aspiration, the person experiences strong strain. ...
... Durkheim stated that suicide risk is related to social factors, such low income, unemployment and educational failure in the end of the 1800's (1897). Recent studies related to suicide also reveal impact of socio-economic factors (Agerbo et al., 2011;Bedeian, 1982;Chang et al., 2010;Chuang & Huang 1996;Strand & Kunst, 2006;Prabha & Hugh, 1992;Whitley et al., 1999;Kuroki, 2010). Availability of insecticides and guns, work-related stress, financial problems, family incompatibility (Sharma, et.al., 2007;Malmberg et al, 1997), alcohol addiction effects on suicide (Innamorati et al., 2010). ...
... Pure alcohol consumption predicts suicide rates in female youths in new EU countries since 2004 (Innamorati et al., 2010) like Russia. According to a study conducted in Denmark to be divorced affect women's suicide more than men (Agerbo, Stack & Petersen, 2011). Being married is a protective factor against socio-economic Figure 2. Distribution of female suicide rates (per 100000) and percentages by age groups in WHO regions (2008) inequalities in suicide in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Turin, Madrid, Norway and Switzerland (Lorant, Kunst, et. ...
... Following up on this insight, investigations from the 20th century explored individual-level data on suicide rates among marital status groups (for reviews, see Agerbo, Stack, & Petersen, 2011;Lester, 1992Lester, , 2000Stack, 1982Stack, , 2000b. A systematic review of the literature from 1880 through 1994 on suicide completions found 37 such studies based on individual-level data, and all supported Durkheim's basic premise of the protective effect of marriage (Stack, 2000b). ...
... Several sociological theories offer explanations for the connection between suicide and marital status (Cutright & Fernquist, 2005;Cutright, Stack, & Fernquist, 2006;Gibbs, 2000;Stack, 2000b). The most often cited explanation is Durkheim's idea that marriage protects against suicide because of its promotion of social integration or bonds between husband and wife (e.g., Agerbo et al., 2011;Shiner, Scourfield, Fincham, & Langer, 2009;Stack, 2000b). In this vein, bonds to a spouse reduce suicide through mechanisms including the giving and receiving of social support, companionship, and validation. ...
Previous individual-level research on the association between the status of divorce and suicide risk has been marked by two recurrent limitations: (a) it is not clear if the timing of divorce (recent vs. distal) affects risk of completed suicides and (b) it is not clear if the association between divorce and suicide completions will withstand controls for a series of risk and protective factors including psychiatric morbidity. The present study addresses these two gaps in the literature. Data are from the National Mortality Follow Back Survey and refer to 13,897 deaths including 1,169 suicides. A model is estimated that controls for major alternative predictors of suicide completions including psychiatric predictors (depression scale) and sociological risk and protective factors (job loss, job demotion, and religiosity). The results of a multivariate logistic regression analysis determined that, controlling for the psychiatric, social, and economic predictors of suicide completions, recent divorce increases the odds of death by suicide 1.6 times, compared with 1.3 times for distal divorce. The study provides the first systematic, U.S.-based results that show that the timing of divorce influences risk of completed suicides independent of depression.
... Blakely, Collings, and Atkinson (2003) observed that unemployment resulted in a threefold risk of suicide, of which only half was explainable by mental illness. Epidemiological studies have confirmed social isolation as being a significant factor, (Agerbo, Stack, and Petersen 2011;Qin, Agerbo, and Mortensen 2003). Higher rates among prisoners have been identified in several studies. ...
There are widely held premises that suicide is almost exclusively the result of mental illness and there is “ strong evidence for successfully detecting and managing suicidality in healthcare” (Hogan and Grumet, 2016). In this context, ‘zero-suicide’ policies have emerged, and suicide risk assessment tools have become a normative component of psychiatric practice. This essay discusses how suicide evolved from a moral to a medical problem and how, in an effort to reduce suicide, a paternalistic healthcare response emerged to predict those at high risk. The evidence for the premises is critiqued and shown to be problematic; and it is found that s trong paternalistic interventions are being used more often than acknowledged. Using a Principles approach, the ethics of overriding autonomy in suicide prevention is considered. Ethical concerns are identified with the current approach which are potentially amplified by the use of these risk assessments. Furthermore, it is identified that the widespread use of risk assessments in health settings is equivalent to screening without regard to the ethical principles of screening. The essay concludes that this is unethical; that we should abandon the use of standardized suicide risk assessments and ‘zero-suicide’ policy; and that this may improve outcomes.
... Social integration theory focuses on how social interactions with family, friends, community and society create social support, which is associated with an individual's self-esteem, physical well-being and sense of commitment to society (Durkheim, 1951). The literature on social integration has demonstrated that a lacking of social integration can lead to deviant and risky behaviour such as suicide (Park and Lester, 2006;Agerbo et al., 2011;Poudel-Tandukar et al., 2011) and increase the mortality rate (Umberson, 1987;Berkman et al., 2004). In contrast, marriage indicates maturity and responsibility, and it is usually attributed to positive effects of social integration. ...
... Aspirations or goals can be a college a person aims to get into, an ideal girl a boy wants to marry, a political cause a person strives for, and so on. Divorce can be a source of strain (Agerbo, Stack, & Petersen, 2011). If the reality is far from the aspiration, the person experiences strong strain. ...
Suicide is a global public health problem, but very few theories have been developed for its etiology and effective prevention. Presented in this article is a comprehensive and parsimonious theory explaining the socio-psychological mechanism prior to suicidal behavior. Strain, resulting from conflicting and competing pressures in an individual’s life, is hypothesized to precede suicide. The strain theory of suicide (STS) proposes four sources of strain leading to suicide: (1) value strain from differential values; (2) aspiration strain from the discrepancy between aspiration and reality; (3) deprivation strain from the relative deprivation, including poverty; and (4) coping strain from deficient coping skills in the face of a crisis. This new model is built on previous notions of anomie (Durkheim, 1897/1951), strain theories of deviance (Merton, 1957) and crime (Agnew, 1992), although suicide is not a major target for explanation in those theories. Future research with rigorous quantitative data needs to be conducted to further test STS on a more comprehensive level.
... Durkheim 1951, p 210). It was equally clear to the early sociological students of suicide that marriage provided a form of integration and that the death of a partrner or divorce placed individuals at heightened suicide risk (Durkheim 1951, pp 173, 259-276; for contemporary evidence on the enhanced risks posed by divorce, see Agerbo et al. 2011;Krull and Trovato 1994). What the historians of marriage in Europe like Shorter, Stone and Watt (Shorter 1976;Stone 1977;Watt 1996) help us to see with clarity is that the protective form of marriage which Durkheim identified was marriage in its posttraditional form, that is: 'companionate marriage'. ...
Relative to men, women in India are much more likely to
take their own lives than women living in industrialised
societies. They do so at higher rates and at younger ages
than many of those in the West. Marriage does not
confer any relative protection from suicide risk for young
Indian men; this too is a notable contrast with the
evidence from developed economies. There are many
potential stressors on Indian women which might
explain the pattern of suicide risk. Changes in
expectations about marriage relationships appear to be
one potent factor in explaining the patterns.
... It is well-known that socio-economic factors play an important role in the distribution of suicide. Durkheim states that the risk of suicide is related to social factors, such as low income, unemployment and educational failure (Agerbo et al., 2011;Bedeian, 1982;Kuroki, 2010). ...
... Several sociological theories offer explanations for the connection between suicide and marital status (Cutright & Fernquist, 2005;Cutright, Stack, & Fernquist, 2006;Gibbs, 2000;Stack, 2000b). The most oftencited explanation is Durkheim's idea that marriage protects against suicide because of its promotion of social integration or bonds between husband and wife (e.g., Agerbo, Stack, & Petersen, 2011;Shiner, Scourfield, Fincham, & Langer, 2009;Stack, 2000b). In this vein, bonds to a spouse reduce suicide through mechanisms including the giving and receiving of social support, companionship, and validation. ...
Sociological work on suicide stresses social forces over individual-centred causes. Since the classic work of Durkheim, the construct of social integration has guided much sociological work. In the present chapter, research on two central integrative institutions is reviewed: marriage and religion. At the concrete individual level, divorced persons, lacking in reciprocal ties and responsibilities to a spouse, tend to have higher suicide rates than their married counterparts. This has been reported for over 100 years in over three dozen nations. That marriage is associated with lower suicide rates is close to a sociological law. Work on religiosity has been marked by some inconsistencies which are reviewed in the context of four theoretical perspectives on religion and suicide: religious integration, religious commitment, religious networks, and the moral community perspective. Most of the work tests only one theoretical perspective in a single locality. The chapter then turns to an empirical test of marital integration, together with an integrated model of religion which incorporates all four perspectives on religion and suicide. Data are from the World Values Surveys and refer to 50,547 individuals nested in 56 nations. Individual level suicide acceptability serves as the dependent variable. Results from a hierarchical linear model confirm marital integration theory and all four traditional perspectives on religion and suicide. Protective factors include Islam, church attendance, time spent with co-religionists and religious coping with life's problems. Clinicians can reinforce existing religiosity levels in clients to enhance effectiveness in suicide prevention.
... In ten countries the divorce rate predicted the suicide rate, but not in the other countries. Agerbo, Stack and Petersen [2011] analysed longitudinal data from 1906 until 2006. They defend the range of the data by referring to the fact that the time period after 1950 is characterised by increasing divorce rates and weakening religiosity, which was not the case in the fi rst half of the 20th century. ...
The text is concerned with suicides in the Czech Republic. It seeks to determine which social variables, and to what extent, have affected suicidal behaviour since 1989. The authors draw on Durkheim's theory that society prevents suicidal tendencies. They formulate six hypotheses to account for the effects of social variables (year, sex, age, education, and marital status) on suicide rates, which they test using data from 1995 to 2010. Their findings show that time weakens the odds for committing suicides. Regardless of the time, women and people who are young, more educated, and living in a marriage face the lowest risk of suicide. That marriage works as a shield against suicide is especially true for men (its protective function for women is significantly lower). In the period observed, there was a relative increase in the effect of two social variables: middle age (45-69 years) and lower education. The structure of variables explaining suicide rates changed during the time period observed.
... Social integration theory focuses on how social interactions with family, friends, community and society create social support, which is associated with an individual's self-esteem, physical well-being and sense of commitment to society (Durkheim, 1951). The literature on social integration has demonstrated that a lacking of social integration can lead to deviant and risky behaviour such as suicide (Park and Lester, 2006;Agerbo et al., 2011;Poudel-Tandukar et al., 2011) and increase the mortality rate (Umberson, 1987;Berkman et al., 2004). In contrast, marriage indicates maturity and responsibility, and it is usually attributed to positive effects of social integration. ...
Background The benefit of wearing a rear seatbelt in reducing the risk of motor vehicle crash-related fatalities and injuries has been well documented in previous studies. Wearing a seatbelt not only reduces the risk of injury to rear-seat passengers, but also reduces the risk of injury to front-seat occupant who could be crushed by unbelted rear-seat passengers in a motor vehicle crash. Despite the benefits of wearing a rear seatbelt, its rate of use in Malaysia is generally low.
Objectives The objective of this study was to identify factors that are associated with the wearing of a seatbelt among rear-seat passengers in Malaysia.
Methods The data collection method engage in this study was a face-to-face interview for 1651 individuals from all states in Malaysia. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to analyse and identify factors related to seatbelt-wearing among rear-seat passengers in Malaysia.
Results The analysis revealed that rear-seat passengers who were older, female, married and more educated and who had a perception of a high level of legislation enforcement, a higher risk-aversion and more driving experience (only for passengers who are also drivers) were more likely to wear a rear seatbelt. There was also a significant positive correlation between driver-seatbelt and rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour. This implies that, in regards to seatbelt-wearing behaviour, drivers are more likely to adopt the same seatbelt-wearing behaviour when travelling as rear-seat passengers as they do when driving.
Significance These findings are crucial to the development of new interventions to increase the compliance rate of wearing a rear seatbelt.
... The present systematic review and meta-ethnography has highlighted the limited qualitative research theorising how schools' institutional features structure self-harm, with a significant death of empirical work considering suicide. This may be unsurprising given broader concerns about the general absence of conceptual work within suicidology [58]. It is imperative to redress this lack, as qualitative methods are distinct in their capacity to offer insights into the complex, recursive and often unanticipated relationships between institutional-level influences and students' health behaviours. ...
Background
Evidence reports that schools influence children and young people’s health behaviours across a range of outcomes. However there remains limited understanding of the mechanisms through which institutional features may structure self-harm and suicide. This paper reports on a systematic review and meta-ethnography of qualitative research exploring how schools influence self-harm and suicide in students.
Methods
Systematic searches were conducted of nineteen databases from inception to June 2015. English language, primary research studies, utilising any qualitative research design to report on the influence of primary or secondary educational settings (or international equivalents) on children and young people’s self-harm and suicide were included. Two reviewers independently appraised studies against the inclusion criteria, assessed quality, and abstracted data. Data synthesis was conducted in adherence with Noblit and Hare’s meta-ethnographic approach. Of 6744 unique articles identified, six articles reporting on five studies were included in the meta-ethnography.
Results
Five meta-themes emerged from the studies. First, self-harm is often rendered invisible within educational settings, meaning it is not prioritised within the curriculum despite students’ expressed need. Second, where self-harm transgresses institutional rules it may be treated as ‘bad behaviour’, meaning adequate support is denied. Third, schools’ informal management strategy of escalating incidents of self-harm to external ‘experts’ serves to contribute to non-help seeking behaviour amongst students who desire confidential support from teachers. Fourth, anxiety and stress associated with school performance may escalate self-harm and suicide. Fifth, bullying within the school context can contribute to self-harm, whilst some young people may engage in these practices as initiation into a social group.
Conclusions
Schools may influence children and young people’s self-harm, although evidence of their impact on suicide remains limited. Prevention and intervention needs to acknowledge and accommodate these institutional-level factors. Studies included in this review are limited by their lack of conceptual richness, restricting the process of interpretative synthesis. Further qualitative research should focus on the continued development of theoretical and empirical insight into the relationship between institutional features and students’ self-harm and suicide.
... Il contributo di Émile Durkheim (2007 [1897]) continua ancora oggi a condizionare le domande di ricerca, le categorie e l'orientamento metodologico della sociologia contemporanea del suicidio (Barbagli, 2009;Nolan et al., 2010;Wray et al., 2011) -che anche per questo tende a chiudendosi ad un reale orientamento multidisciplinare. Il numero relativamente ridotto di studi specificamente sociologici (in rapporto sia ai lavori dell'intera suicidologia che alle pubblicazioni della sociologia nel suo complesso: vedi Agerbo et al., 2009) mostra inoltre, nella quasi totalità dei casi, il ricorso ad approcci quantitativi. Come evidenziato da più parti, l'impiego di approcci qualitativi (o misti) costituisce infatti un ristretto sottoinsieme dei lavori sociologici sul tema (Hjelmeland, 2010;Lester, 2010;Wray, 2011;Finchman et al., 2011;Scourfield et al., 2012). ...
... Aspirations or goals can be a college a person aims to get into, an ideal girl a boy wants to marry, a political cause a person strives for, and so on. Divorce can be a source of strain (Agerbo, Stack, & Petersen, 2011). If the reality is far from the aspiration, the person experiences strong strain. ...
While suicidologists have interpreted the motives and risk factors of suicide in numerous ways, the ultimate objective is to find a theory that explains the majority of the variance in suicidal behaviors. Durkheim's (1951 [1897]) classical theory of social integration and regulation, explaining egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic suicide, is in theoretical and practical conflict with the psychopathological theories prevalent in today's world. However, substantial numbers of suicides, East and West, are carried out by individuals who appear to be socially integrated (Zhang, 2000; Zhang & Jin, 1998), and only a very small percentage of mentally ill people kill themselves (Mann, et al., 1999), although over 90% of suicides in the West have been diagnosed with mental disorders including major depression and alcohol or substance use disorders (NIMH, 2003). Also, in the Western world, individuals who are male, white or older are more likely to kill themselves than individuals who are female, black or younger. If the psychiatric model were valid, men, whites and older persons should be more abnormal psychologically than women, blacks and younger persons which is, of course, far from the truth (Thio, 2004). A psychiatric disorder may be a necessary condition for suicide, but it is definitely not sufficient, and in order to identify suicide risk factors, it is necessary to look beyond the presence of a major psychiatric syndrome (Mann, et al., 1999). Furthermore, most previous studies of suicide have been restricted to one domain of possible risk factors such as the social (Brent, et al., 1993; Chiles, et al., 1989; Daly, et al., 1986; Maris, 1997; Roy, 1985; Roy & Segal, 1995; Schulsinger & Kety, 1979; Zhang & Thomas, 1991), psychiatric (Kaplan & Harrow, 1996; Rich & Runeson, 1995; Strakowski, et al., 1996), or psychological (Beck, et al, 1985; Nordstrom, et al., 1995; Pokorny, 1983; Zhang & Jin, 1998). Most of those studies are generally from medical perspectives and are exploratory in nature. Mann and colleagues (1999) developed and tested a stress-diathesis theory of suicide, but it is only a clinical model based on and for psychiatric patients. Heeringen's (2003) psychobiological model of suicidal behavior that focuses on a state-trait interaction seems more generalizable, but again is neurobiological in nature. In order to overcoming these deficiencies, this chapter proposes a basic paradigm that incorporates the available theories, hypotheses and findings explaining suicide in the world today. The new paradigm is built on previous notions of anomie and strain (Durkheim 1951 [1897]), although Merton's (1957) strain theory of deviance and crime and Agnew's (1992) general strain theory have not in the past included suicide as a target for explanation.
... There has been a range of research exploring the relationship between marriage, divorce, and suicide. In alignment with Durkheim's (1897Durkheim's ( /2002 seminal research, a number of ecological studies have been conducted (Agerbo, Stack, & Petersen, 2011;Fernquist, 2003;Gunnell, Middleton, & Whitley, 2003;Lester, 1992Lester, , 1995. One of the most extensive reviews was carried out by the World Health Organization (1968), which found a higher mortality rate from suicide for both divorced males and females compared with other relationship statuses in Europe, Australasia, and North America. ...
An association between divorce and suicide risk has been noted in numerous studies, but the gender profile of this risk has not been clearly established. This article reviews the evidence on gender differentials in suicide risk following the breakdown of an intimate relationship (including divorce and separation). Nineteen published articles that included individual-level data were identified. Twelve reported a greater risk of suicide in men following relationship breakdown, two indicated a greater risk in women, and a further five showed no clear gender differential. Although there are possible indications of increased risk for men, no definitive conclusion about gender differential can be drawn. Furthermore, research is required that directly compares men with women for suicide risk following relationship breakdown.
... Additionally, Rodriguez-Pulido et al. (1992) found that divorced women were 8.5 times more likely to complete suicide than married women, while divorced men were eight times more likely to complete suicide than married men. Furthermore, data provided by Agerbo et al. (2011) indicate that a 1% increase in divorce is associated with a 0.52% increase in suicide rates in men, whereas the same percentage increase in divorce is associated with a 1.12% increase in suicide in women. ...
... Finally, we incorporate two measures of the sociocultural context of states over time. Family structure, shown to be an important correlate of suicide in prior work (Agerbo et al., 2011;Stack, 2000b), is measured by the percent divorced. Estimates of the number of divorced persons came from the American Community Survey for the years 2005e2010 and from the decennial U.S. Census for years 1990 and 2000. ...
... 3 Some papers suggest that divorce rates should be relatively high to manifest an effect on suicide rates (e.g., Fernquist, 2003) and that analyses need to be based on relatively long time periods to detect such impact on the national suicide rate (Agerbo et al., 2011). marriages) as proxy for the social religiousness and the church attendance as proxy for individual religiousness which we consider the true belief at the individual level. ...
We study the relationship between suicide rates and socioeconomic factors by using a panel data at Italian province level in the time span 1996–2005. Our analysis focuses on the impact of social norms on suicidal behaviors. In particular, beyond the usual social correlates of suicide rates, we propose an aggregate measure of social conformity which refers to the religious sphere as an area of conflict between individual and social behaviors. GMM and dynamic spatial panel data approach are implemented to control for serial and spatial autocorrelation.
The results confirm the primary role of family, alcohol consumption and population density in explaining the suicide rates in Italy, while the economic variables, namely income per capita and economic growth, do not appear to have any effects.
... Social integration theory focuses on how social interactions with family, friends, community and society create social support, which is associated with an individual's self-esteem, physical well-being and sense of commitment to society (Durkheim, 1951). The literature on social integration has demonstrated that a lacking of social integration can lead to deviant and risky behaviour such as suicide (Park and Lester, 2006;Agerbo et al., 2011;Poudel-Tandukar et al., 2011) and increase the mortality rate (Umberson, 1987;Berkman et al., 2004). In contrast, marriage indicates maturity and responsibility, and it is usually attributed to positive effects of social integration. ...
The benefit of wearing a rear seatbelt in reducing the risk of motor vehicle crash-related fatalities and injuries has been well documented in previous studies. Wearing a seatbelt not only reduces the risk of injury to rear-seat passengers, but also reduces the risk of injury to front-seat occupant who could be crushed by unbelted rear-seat passengers in a motor vehicle crash. Despite the benefits of wearing a rear seatbelt, its rate of use in Malaysia is generally low. The objective of this study was to identify factors that are associated with the wearing of a seatbelt among rear-seat passengers in Malaysia. Multinomial logistic regression analysis of the results of a questionnaire survey of 1651 rear-seat passengers revealed that rear-seat passengers who were younger, male, single and less educated and who had a perception of a low level of legislation enforcement, a lower risk-aversion and less driving experience (only for passengers who are also drivers) were less likely to wear a rear seatbelt. There was also a significant positive correlation between driver seatbelt and rear seatbelt-wearing behaviour. This implies that, in regards to seatbelt-wearing behaviour, drivers are more likely to adopt the same seatbelt-wearing behaviour when travelling as rear-seat passengers as they do when driving. These findings are crucial to the development of new interventions to increase the compliance rate of wearing a rear seatbelt.
Suicide is a painful human reality affecting worldwide individuals of different ages, races, cultural, and religious backgrounds. It has been traditionally attributed to mental illness, but it has also been linked to other adverse social circumstances, not always adequately addressed by psychiatry and other mental and health professions. To make impact on its prevention at different levels, coordinated multidisciplinary efforts must be community based. Throughout this chapter, the authors go back in history to see how the interpretations and solutions offered have evolved. When proposing solutions, emphasis is placed in the model of interventions provided by the WHO-backed Safe Communities Movement, pioneered and coordinated at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm.
Objective: Estimate the effects of age, period, and birth cohort on suicide mortality in Brazil and by major geographic region in the overall population and by sex.
Methods: This was a time trend ecological study. National and regional suicide mortality data from 1981 to 2015 were analyzed for the overall population and by sex. Age, period, and cohort effects were calculated with a Poisson regression model, using estimable functions with the Epi package of the R statistical program, version 3.4.3.
Results: Except for the North of Brazil and the female population in the Central-West region, the model that best fits the data was the complete model, following by the age-period model in most of the analyses.
Conclusions: Suicide mortality rates have shown an upward trend with advancing age in the Brazilian population, in both men and women. However, the behavior of the period effect and cohort has depended on the population analyzed and regional distribution.
Rationale
Suicides by men outnumber those by women in every country of the world. To date, there has not been a comprehensive systematic review of risk factors for suicidal behaviour in men to better understand the excess deaths by suicide in men.
Objective
The present systematic review seeks to determine the nature and extent of the risk factors to predict suicidal behaviour in men over time.
Methods
A range of databases (CINAHL, PsycINFO, Web of Science Core Collection, Pubmed, Embase, and Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection) were searched from inception to January 2020 for eligible articles. The findings were collated through a narrative synthesis of the evidence.
Results
An initial 601 studies were identified. Following the inclusion and exclusion criteria, there were 105 eligible studies (62 prospective and 43 retrospective) identified. Overall, the risk factors with the strongest evidence predicting suicidal behaviour in men were alcohol and/or drug use/dependence; being unmarried, single, divorced, or widowed; and having a diagnosis of depression. In the prospective studies, the most consistent evidence was for sociodemographic factors (21 risk factors), mental health/psychiatric illness (16 risk factors), physical health/illness (15 risk factors), and negative life events/trauma (11 risk factors). There were a small number of psychological factors (6 factors) and characteristics of suicidal behaviour (3 factors) identified. The findings from the retrospective studies provided further evidence for the risk factors identified in the prospective studies.
Conclusions
This systematic review has highlighted the wide range of risk factors for suicidal behaviour in men, in this review alone 119 risk factors were identified. Many factors can interact and change in relevance throughout an individual’s life. This review has identified extensive gaps in our knowledge as well as suggestions for future research.
Suicide is a complex structure and also affects the families whose members commit suicide, health care professionals and society. Suicide is accepted as a form of death of external causes. It can be predicted and majority of suicides can be prevented. Suicide shows a big amount of differences depending on time, region, age level, gender and race. In order to understand and prevent suicide, several geographical, medical, psychosocial, cultural and socioeconomic factors have been studied. A tiny disorder in one of these factors may cause a significant change that results in severe outcomes. In preventing suicide, it is important to determine the subgroups that have high risk. Strategies to prevent suicide can be developed through searching and understanding the suicide geography. In this study, the spatial pattern of female suicide is examined with suicide maps. With suicide maps, it is aimed to clarify the spatial alteration of the deaths caused by female suicide, to help in focusing on female suicide, to increase the awareness of the specific regions and groups that have a high risk and to guide those who are dealing with decreasing the death ratios, public health experts and decision makers. In Turkey, according to the suicide rate averages of ten years (2002-2011), mostly the young age groups are at risk among women. The ratio of suicides caused by family incompatibility, educational failure and emotional relationship and not forced marriage is higher in females than in males. Turkey is a northern hemisphere country and features subtropical climate types, where females mostly commit suicide in summer and spring seasons. It is observed that there is no peak period in female suicide in Turkey. When the distribution of suicide based death ratios are examined, it is seen that the highest ratios are in the eastern and western parts of Turkey. It is seen that suicide occurs in the provinces with low socioeconomic status as well as the provinces with high socioeconomic status and in provinces with both a large population and a small population. And also it is determined that for those provinces, detailed studies should immediately be started. It is seen that the ratio of female suicide is getting higher and approaching to the ratio of male suicide from western parts to eastern parts of Turkey. Between these years, 75% of the suicides were committed by means of violent methods and 25% of them were committed by means of nonviolent methods. The provinces where the ratio of using violent suicide methods is higher than the standard deviation are located in the eastern part of the country. It is noteworthy that the ratio of female suicide victims who are single is close to the ratio of those who are married. The suicide ratio of married women is decreasing from west to east.
Objectives: This article examines whether sexual minority men and women experience greater increases in depressive symptoms and loneliness with age compared to heterosexual men and women.
Methods: Using three waves of data from sexual minority (nMen = 87 and nWomen = 62) and heterosexual (nMen = 1,297 and nWomen = 1,362) older adults in the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we used latent growth curve modeling to test whether change in depressive symptoms and loneliness varies across sexual orientation and whether annual household income and family support accounted for this change.
Results: Although differences in the growth trajectories of depressive symptoms and loneliness across sexual orientation were not observed, gender differences were. Annual household income and family support more strongly influenced initial depressive symptoms and loneliness in sexual minority men and women than in heterosexual men and women.
Conclusions: Trajectories of depressive symptoms and loneliness in older adulthood do not vary by sexual orientation. Economic and family resources may allow sexual minorities to cope effectively with depressive symptoms and loneliness.
Clinical Implications: Clinicians should be cautious about assuming that older sexual minority group members are more susceptible to depressive symptoms and loneliness than heterosexual groups by virtue of their sexual preference.
Durkheim's social integration perspective on suicide continues to be the basis of much sociological work on the link between family integration and suicide. The ecological perspective has been commonly used to understand suicide. Marital disruption is one of the ecological factors. Suicidogenic conditions such as mental, physical, and economic strains tend to be higher among the divorced than the married. There has been little research on the timing of suicide over the process of divorce. Are suicide rates highest during the often stressful stage of separation or the period around when the divorce is finalized in a courtroom and bonds broken forever, or perhaps even for years thereafter? Future research is needed to carefully unravel the links between divorce and suicide. Individual predispositions toward divorce, such as personality differences including low agreeableness, need to be weighed against social factors, including socioeconomic status, to improve understanding of this long-standing linkage.
Can we share even today the same vision of modernity which Durkheim left us by its suicide analysis? or can society ‘surprise us’? The answer to these questions can be inspired by several studies which found that beginning the second half of the twentieth century suicides in western countries more industrialized and modernized do not increase in a constant, linear way as modernization and social fragmentation process increases, as well as Durkheim’s theory seems to lead us to predict. Despite continued modernizing process, they found stabilizing or falling overall suicide rate trends. Therefore, a gradual process of adaptation to the stress of modernization associated to low social integration levels seems to be activated in modern society. Assuming this perspective, the paper highlights as this tendency may be understood in the light of the new concept of social systems as complex adaptive systems, systems which are able to adapt to environmental perturbations and generate as a whole surprising, emergent effects due to nonlinear interactions among their components. So, in the frame of Nonlinear Dynamical System Modeling, we formalize the logic of suicide decision-making process responsible for changes at aggregate level in suicide growth rates by a nonlinear differential equation structured in a logistic way, and in so doing we attempt to capture the mechanism underlying the change process in suicide growth rate and to test the hypothesis that system’s dynamics exhibits a restrained increase process as expression of an adaptation process to the liquidity of social ties in modern society. In particular, a Nonlinear Logistic Map is applied to suicide data in a modern society such as the Italian one from 1875 to 2010. The analytic results, seeming to confirm the idea of the activation of an adaptation process to the liquidity of social ties, constitutes an opportunity for a more general reflection on the current configuration of modern society, by relating the Durkheimian Theory with the Halbwachs’ Theory and most current visions of modernity such as the Baumanian one. Complexity completes the interpretative framework by rooting the generating mechanism of adaptation process in the precondition of a new General Theory of Systems making the non linearity property of social system’s interactions and surprise the functioning and evolution rule of social systems.
For the effects of social integration on suicides, there have been different and even contradictive conclusions. In this study, the selected economic and social risks of suicide for different age groups and genders in the United Kingdom were identified and the effects were estimated by the multilevel time series analyses. To our knowledge, there exist no previous studies that estimated a dynamic model of suicides on the time series data together with multilevel analysis and autoregressive distributed lags. The investigation indicated that unemployment rate, inflation rate, and divorce rate are all significantly and positively related to the national suicide rates in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 2011. Furthermore, the suicide rates of almost all groups above 40 years are significantly associated with the risk factors of unemployment and inflation rate, in comparison with the younger groups.
Suicide is a complex structure and also affects the families of the person who commit suicide, health care professionals and society. Suicide shows large differences depending on the time, region, age level, gender and race. Suicides are chaotic events because a little confusion on one of each these factors may cause a significant change that leads to severe consequences. Chaos theorists believe that the first step to deal with chaos is to understand it. Therefore, all aspects of suicide need to be understood in detail in order to prevent it. Strategies to prevent suicide can be developed through searching and understanding the suicide geography. In this chapter, the spatial pattern of female suicide is examined with suicide maps. With suicide maps, the aim is to clarify the spatial alteration of the deaths caused by female suicide, to help in focusing on female suicide, to increase the awareness of the specific regions and groups that have a high risk and so to guide the ones who are dealing with decreasing the death ratios, public health experts and decision makers.
The connection between divorce and suicide risk in Asia is unclear. To understand the contribution of cultural transitions to suicide among the divorced, we compare age- and sex-specific suicide rates among divorced men and women from five Pacific Rim populations: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and the state of Victoria in Australia. On a cultural spectrum, we consider Hong Kong and Taiwan to lie between the more individualistic Australian culture and the more collectivistic Japanese and Korean cultures. Coefficients of aggravation (COA) are also compared. Suicide rates were found to be higher among the divorced than among other marital status groups in all five populations, but this difference was small in Victoria. The effect of divorce was significantly greater for men than for women only in Japan and South Korea. In the other populations, divorced men and women were at equal risk. Age trends in suicide rates for the divorced groups differed across populations. The COAs for the divorced group aged 40 or younger in the East Asian populations were higher than the COAs for older divorced groups, though this was not the case in the Victorian population. Suicide patterns among the divorced in the East Asian populations can be understood in terms of the legacy of Confucian traditions. Gender differences in Japan and South Korea may reflect either gender inequality (male dominance in formal interactions and emotional dependence in domestic life within a deteriorating Confucian family support system) or unique socio-cultural factors among married women. Divorced East Asian groups aged 40 or younger may be at a higher risk of suicide due to individual-level cultural ambivalence combined with a desire for systemic-level emotional interdependence. Social welfare regimes in the four East Asian populations need to fill the vacancy left by retreating traditional family systems. Research implications are discussed.
This paper's main aim is to argue the methodological case for a particular approach to researching the sociology of suicide. By way of illustrating the use of this approach it also offers some brief examples of substantive findings about the gendered character of men's suicides. The first half of the article explains and justifies the research approach. This is a qualitatively-driven mixed method and dual paradigm study of individual suicides. It is a sociological study which draws on the tradition of psychological autopsies of suicide; hence the term 'sociological autopsy'. The second half of the article offers brief illustrative findings from a specific research project which employed the sociological autopsy approach. This was a study of 100 suicide case files from a coroner's office in the UK. There is discussion of common sense assumptions about suicide in men; the construction of evidence in case files; a typology of gendered suicides where relationship breakdown seems to be the principal trigger; and the value of case-based analysis, with a single case discussed in some detail.
In time-series studies of Israeli suicide rates from 1960 to 1989, male and female suicide rates were positively associated with marriage rates. Divorce rates were positively associated with male suicide rates but negatively with female suicide rates, while the pattern for the association between birth rates and suicide rates was reversed. These results were not as consistent with predictions from Durkheim's theory of suicide as were the results from the USA for the same time period.
In the context of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec during the late 1950s, this article devotes specific attention to the widening
sex differential in suicide rates from 1931 to 1986. We reconceptualize sex roles and suicide in the context of modernization
theory and then consider the Quebec case. We argue that the differential can be explained by the presence of varied integrating
and regulating structures in society for men and women. Natural differences between the sexes are unimportant in explaining
the lower suicide propensities of women than of men. We also challenge the view that the role expansion of women will necessarily
lead to a convergence in male and female suicide rates. The results of this analysis are consistent with the hypothesis that
insofar as suicide rates can be considered a manifestation of differences in psychiatric pathology between the sexes, modernization
in Quebec has been more detrimental to men than to women. We conclude that the breakdown in traditional forms of social integration
and regulation in Quebec will continue to engender a widening of the sex differential in suicide risk.
Durkheim's theory of suicide stressed the historical processes of modernization in explaining the rise in suicide. Tests of Durkheim's theory have, however, been largely ahistorical. The present study fills this void with a time-series analysis of Finnish historical suicide data. A Cochrane-Orcutt analysis finds that a one percent increase in urbanization is associated with a. 19 percent increase in suicide. The results are independent of control variables from alternate perspectives on suicide. Some evidence is found to support Halbwach's "Law of Convergence." Whereas a one percent increase in modernization increases suicide by .22 percent in the 19th century, this figure drops to .12 percent in the 20th century.
The author examines the relationship between divorce and suicide using U.S. data for the period 1933-1970. The increase in the strength of the positive relationship between divorce and suicide in the period after World War II is contrasted with trends during the era of the Depression preceding World War II (ANNOTATION)
Major works on suicide are reviewed and classified into four analytic categories according to their theoretical emphasis: cultural, economic, modernization, and social integration perspectives. The research under these paradigms is assessed in terms of four themes. First, attention is drawn to research evidence that questions traditional theories. An example is Durkheim's position on social class and suicide. Second, the review notes several new theories including Phillips’ imitation thesis and the author's own model of migration's effects on suicide. Third, the paper observes and reviews explanations of new trends in suicide rates such as the rapid increase in youth suicide and the decline in suicide among the elderly. Finally, the review calls attention to explanations of suicide, such as that linking suicide to low marital solidarity, that have withstood the test of the more rigorous empirical testing of recent times.
A study of the impact of domestic integration (marriage, birth and divorce rates) on suicide in twenty-one nations indicated that marriage and divorce rates were associated with suicide rates in the majority of nations as predicted by Durkheim. Birth rates, however, were not consistently associated with suicide rates in the sample of nations. The implications of these results were discussed.
Examined social and economic variables that may be associated with differing patterns of suicide and homicide in the US and Canada. Data on suicide and homicide rates from 1950 to 1985 were obtained from the WHO. Marriage, birth, and divorce rates were obtained from the United Nations, and unemployment rates were obtained from the International Labor Office. Divorce rates contributed to the prediction of suicide and homicide rates in both nations. Marriage had a protective effect on suicide in the US, but it significantly contributed to the homicide rate in Canada. Birth rate was negatively associated with suicide in both countries. However, unemployment had little predictive power for either suicide or homicide, suggesting that domestic stress is a stronger predictor of both types of violence than is economic stress. (Italian abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Durkheim's sociological theory of suicide was examined to explore how well it performed in predicting the Japanese suicide rate from 1970 to 1989. Focusing on family social integration, only the divorce rate was associated with the suicide rate in the predicted direction (positively). Birth and marriage rates were not significantly associated with the suicide rate. Examination of the suicide rate by each method separately did not greatly improve the predictive power of Durkheim's theory. The study thus questions the applicability of Durkheim's theory to non-European nations.
A time-series analysis of suicide and homicide rates in Australia from 1966 to 1985 revealed that suicide rates were lower and homicide rates higher in years when more alcohol was consumed per capita. The association of alcohol consumption with homicide was expected, but the association with suicide was opposite to that predicted.
Time-series analyses were carried out to explore the importance of sociological and economic variables in accounting for the suicide rate in the U.S.A. and in Taiwan for 1952-1984. Sociological variables (divorce and female labor force participation) played similar roles in the multiple regressions for both nations while economic variables (GNP per capita/growth and unemployment) played a role only in the U.S.A.
Identical data sets for Australia and the USA from 1946 to 1984 were analysed to explore the association of unemployment rates, female participation in the labour force and divorce with suicide rates. While female participation in the labour force was related to suicide rates in Australia, unemployment was not. For the USA, both female participation in the labour force and unemployment were related to suicide rates.
The present study examined the association between alcohol consumption and rates of personal violence (suicide and homicide) over regions within a nation. Although suicide rates were higher in regions with a higher per capital consumption of alcohol, other social variables were also found to be associated with both alcohol consumption and suicide rates, such as divorce rates and inter-region migration. Thus, it appears that alcohol consumption may be but one index of a broader sociocultural dimension that is associated with regional rates of suicidal behavior.
This article describes the distribution of divorce by demographic groups as well as trends in divorce in both the United States and 24 other developed nations. Macro- and individual-level explanations of divorce are reviewed. Key macrolevel explanations include the liberalization of divorce laws and the strength of religion. Individual-level predictors include personality factors such as low agreeableness, income level, and infidelity. The consequences of divorce on children include an increased risk for psychological maladjustment, decreased school performance, and delinquency. For adults, divorce increases the risk of low well-being, including psychological distress, poor physical health, violence, and suicide.
Sociologists have taken little interest in alcohol abuse as a possible antecedent of suicide. However, a theoretical link between the two phenomena can be postulated that is consistent with Durkheim's suicide theory. In this article, various data and methods are triangulated to scrutinize the relationship between alcohol and suicide. The control variables include, among others, divorce and unemployment. The empirical basis comprises ecological and time-series data for Sweden. Special efforts are made to integrate the findings with results from existent individual-level studies. According to the findings, a good third of the male suicides are attributable to the alcohol factor. The impact of unemployment is also found to be fairly strong, and here the indirect effects seem to be at least as important as the direct ones. No relationship was found between divorce and suicide.
Previous research on the impact of religiosity on suicide has been largely restricted to American samples. The present study explored the relationship in a fundamentally different socio-economic context: Sweden. With Sweden's welfare capitalism, the effect of religion might be minimal or nonexistent. A time series analysis finds that religious trends were unrelated to the general male and female rate of suicide, but were related to youth suicide rates. However, changes in religion were too closely related to changes in divorce to ascertain whether religious change or a more general trend toward social individualism was responsible for increases in youth suicide. Additionally, unemployment was unrelated to suicide. The models explained up to 80% of the variance in suicide.
Sociological work on the impact of divorce on suicide has been largely confined to American samples. The current paper investigates the relationship in the cultural and institutional context of Finland. A Cochrane-Orcutt time series analysis confirms the divorce-suicide linkage for Finland. A 1% increase in divorce is associated with a 0.24% increase in male suicide, and a 0.12% increase in female suicide. Given that divorce and religiosity trends were highly correlated, however, it is concluded that a master variable, individualism, is responsible for the increase in Finnish suicide.
Sociologists have taken little interest in alcohol abuse as a possible antecedent of suicide. However, a theoretical link
between the two phenomena can be postulated that is consistent with Durkheim's suicide theory. In this article, various data
and methods are triangulated to scrutinize the relationship between alcohol and suicide. The control variables include, among
others, divorce and unemployment. The empirical basis comprises ecological and time-series data for Sweden. Special efforts
are made to integrate the findings with results from existent individual-level studies. According to the findings, a good
third of the male suicides are attributable to the alcohol factor. The impact of unemployment is also found to be fairly strong,
and here the indirect effects seem to be at least as important as the direct ones. No relationship was found between divorce
and suicide.
Research on the impact of divorce on suicide has largely been restricted to American samples. It is unclear whether the results based on a single nation may be replicated for other nations. The present study extends the analysis to Norway. In contrast to the United States, Norway has a relatively high degree of cultural homogeneity, a national character thought to act as a buffer against suicide, and a relatively low divorce rate. Given these and other contextual features of Norwegian society that can offset the negative effects of an upswing in divorce, the positive impact of divorce on suicide may not be replicated. A time series analysis, however, documents a relationship between divorce and suicide. A 1% increase in divorce is associated with a 0.46% increase in suicide. In spite of Norway's institutional and cultural protection against taking one's own life, the decline in marital integration is associated with an increase in suicide. The frequently observed link between unemployment and suicide is not found in Norway, a fact that is interpreted in relation to the full-employment policies of welfare capitalism. Finally, the effects of divorce on suicide are independent of trends in religiosity, and the religious factor is unrelated to suicide.
Research on the effect of divorce on suicide has been restricted largely to American samples. This paper explores the relationship with data from a nation with a substantially different social context, Japan. Japan is marked by a low divorce rate, high extended family integration, cultural conformism, and low couple centeredness. These contextual features of Japanese society may offset the negative consequences of an upward trend in divorce. Other variables related to suicide such as unemployment, religiosity, and postwar anomie are examined as controls. A time series analysis is unable to substantiate the divorce-suicide pattern for Japan. While the present research does not offer support for the relationship between divorce and suicide which Durkheim predicted, it does corroborate his general theory of family integration.
Cross-sectional and time series studies in the United States demonstrate that divorce is directly related to the national suicide rate. The present investigation is a longitudinal analysis of this relationship for Canada during the time interval from 1950 to 1982. During this phase of recent Canadian history, both divorce and suicide rates have followed ascending trends. The multivariate analyses in this research provide results that are generally consistent with previous findings for the United States, but some deviations from the expected pattern are also noted. It was found that in Canada, the national rate of suicide varies directly with the rate of family dissolution, even after the effects of unemployment and females' participation in the labor force were taken into account simultaneously. It was anticipated that unemployment and suicide would be directly associated; however, the results in this study fail to confirm this prediction for the nation as a whole, but among relatively young cohorts there is indication that for men, unemployment is positively related to suicide mortality. Concerning participation of females in the economy, the association of this variable with self-inflicted death is found to be positive only for males, at the national level of analysis. Among relatively young cohorts, however, this relationship is significant only among females, and the sign of the effect is negative.
This work uses Durkheimian societal integration measures and proxies for the culture of suicide to test for differences in the impact of predictors on suicide rates of younger and older women and for change in the effect of predictors over time. Four integration measures (female labor force participation, divorce rates, fertility, and religious book production) retained the same sign in all age groups, and their unstandardized regression coefficients typically increased as the mean suicide rate of the age group increased through ages 55–64, before declining. The culture of suicide (measured with attitudinal data or regional proxies) had much stronger effects on the explained variance of women 65 and older than on women 15–64. With controls on societal integration and region, the pattern of declining female suicide rates after 1970, as predicted by “institutional adjustment” theorists, did not appear.
An earlier comparative time series analysis of the connection between per capita alcohol consumption and suicide mortality reported, unexpectedly, a non-significant effect of alcohol on the suicide rate of Finnish men. However, the suicide rate of Finnish men is heterogeneous in regard to age groups. There is also indication that the connection between alcohol and suicides is stranger in younger than in older age groups. Time series data on per capita alcohol consumption and age-specific suicide mortality in 1950-91 were used to scrutinize the relationship. The results indicate that the suicide rate of Finnish men in age groups 15-34 years and 35-49 years is associated with per capita alcohol consumption, while no connection could be established between the suicide rates of men aged 50-69 years and 70 + years and either per capita alcohol consumption or a lagged consumption measure. Real income, divorce rate and unemployment rate were regarded as possible confounding variables.
Previous research on Australian, Canadian, and U.S. trends in the ratio of male to female suicide rates (the relative gender gap) has concluded that changes in female rates are the principal cause of change in the ratio. Pampel's (1998) analysis of longitudinal cross-national data asserts that an unmeasured construct labeled “institutional adjustment” and his measure of the “national political context” are important predictors of trends in female suicide and the accompanying trends in the relative gender gap. Tests of Pampel's measure of national political context failed to find its expected impact on trends in male or female suicide rates or the relative gender gap. However, the period effects attributed by Pampel to the “institutional adjustment” process were evident, even after controlling societal integration and the culture of suicide. Still, Durkheimian indicators of societal integration, national cultures of suicide, and residualized lagged (1938) dependent variables explained most of the variation in 1955–1994 male and female suicide rates and the relative gender gap.
Durkheim found that, not only do divorce rates significantly impact suicide rates in different countries, but the level of divorce has significant impacts on suicide rates. He further argues that the level of divorce has differential impacts on male and female suicide rates. Current research also suggests that the level of religiosity impacts suicide rates. Using data from 21 developed countries from 1955 to 1994, male and female age-standardized suicide rates are examined in light of the level of divorce and religiosity. Results show that the level of divorce differentially impacts the association between divorce rates and female suicide rates while the level of religiosity differentially impacts the association between religious book production and male suicide rates. Alterations in Durkheim's theory of suicide are needed to account for cross-national suicide rates over the past several decades.
The literature an marital status and happiness has neglected comparative analysis, cohabitation and gender-specific analysis. It is not clear if the married-happiness relationship is consistent across nations, if it is stronger than a cohabitation-happiness link, and if it applies to hath genders. We address these issues using data from 17 national surveys. A multiple I egression analysis determined that the relationship between marital status and happiness holds ill 16 of the 17 nations and the strength of the association does not vary significantly in 14 of rite 17 nations. Being married was 3.4 times more closely tied to the variance in happiness than was cohabitation, and marriage increases happiness equally among men and women. Marriage may affect happiness through two intervening processes: the promotion financial satisfaction and the improvement of health. These intervening processes did not replicate for cohabitants.
In 1916-17, prices of alcoholic beverages increased dramatically in Denmark, and alcohol consumption decreased strongly. On the basis of this ‘natural experiment’, the effect of variations in per capita alcohol consumption on suicide rates is estimated, and compared to Norström's analysis of Danish data from the period 1931-80, as well as similar analyses from other countries. It is concluded that per capita alcohol consumption is probably related to the suicide rate in Denmark, but to a less extent than in some other countries.
The two most commonly used penalized model selection criteria, the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and Akaike 's information criterion (AIC), are examined and compared. Their motivations as approximations of two different target quantities are discussed, and their performance in estimating those quantities is assessed. Despite their different foundations, some similarities between the two statistics can be observed, for example, in analogous interpretations of their penalty terms. The behavior of the criteria in selecting good models for observed data is examined with simulated data and also illustrated with the analysis of two well-known data sets on social mobility, it is argued that useful information for model selection can be obtained from using AIC and BIC together, particularly from trying as far as possible to find models favored by both criteria.
Divorce rales were associated with the suicide rales, not only of the divorced, but also of the single, married and widowed over the stales of America in 1980, indicating that the divorce rate may function as an indicator of general social malaise.
This book examines (and tries to account for) the variation in the suicide and homicide of the nations of the world. The goals of the present study are, therefore, to obtain rates of suicide and homicide for as many nations of the world as possible and, then, to explore which social characteristics of the nations predict these suicide and homicide rates, drawing upon the results and techniques of earlier ecological studies of nations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
present paper first outlines the theoretical reasons for predicting a higher suicide rate given a decline in the strength of the institutions of marriage/family and religion
this study tests the assumption that changes in marriage/family variables are associated with changes in religious variables
presents an index of family/religion individualism and tests a series of hypotheses regarding the relationship between this individualism index and various suicide rates, including the suicide rate of the age cohort thought to be most affected by the increase in individualism—the youth cohort (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A model for comparison of levels of social integration in each of theNordic countries was developed from Durkheim's theories and then tested on Norwegian and Danish data to determine whether the difference in the frequency of suicide between Norway and Denmark could be “explained” by a corresponding difference in degree of social integration. The results confirmed Durkheim's theory in that the general level of social integration was found to be considerably lower inDenmark than in Norway. Danish middleaged women, whose rate of suicide is more than three times that of their Norwegian counterparts, were expecially poorly integrated by comparison. Furthermore, the level of integration among young Norwegian men was found to be in marked decline and their suicide rate on the increase. The necessity of testing and refining the method is stressed.
Past research on the effect of marital dissolution on suicide is limited largely to the cultural and institutional framework of the U.S. The present article studies Denmark, a nation with a different social context. A Cochrane-Orcutt iterative regression analysis replicates the American-based pattern for Denmark. The divorce index is more closely associated than the unemployment rate with changes in the suicide rate. A 1% increase in divorce is associated with a 0.32% increase in suicide. Divorce trends also predict the incidence of youth suicide. The study further confirms the generalization that links rapid change in kinship structures to suicide in industrial societies.
This article reviews the findings of 84 sociological studies published over a 15-year period. These studies deal with tests of the modernization and/or social integration perspectives on suicide. Research on modernization, religious integration, and political integration often questioned or reformulated the traditional Durkheimian perspective. A major new theoretical development, Pescosolido's religious networks perspective, gained some empirical support in the 15-year period. The strongest support for social integration theory came from research on marital integration, wherein more than three quarters of the research found a significant relationship. Finally, further research on migration, a force lowering social integration, continued to tend to find a positive link to suicide.
In many applications observations have some type of clustering, with observations within clusters tending to be correlated. A common instance of this occurs when each subject in the sample undergoes repeated measurement, in which case a cluster consists of the set of observations for the subject. One approach to modeling clustered data introduces cluster-level random effects into the model. The use of random effects in linear models for normal responses is well established. By contrast, random effects have only recently seen much use in models for categorical data. This chapter surveys a variety of potential social science applications of random effects modeling of categorical data. Applications discussed include repeated measurement for binary or ordinal responses, shrinkage to improve multiparameter estimation of a set of proportions or rates, multivariate latent variable modeling, hierarchically structured modeling, and cluster sampling. The models discussed belong to the class of generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs), an extension of ordinary linear models that permits non-normal response variables and both fixed and random effects in the predictor term. The models are GLMMs for either binomial or Poisson response variables, although we also present extensions to multicategory (nominal or ordinal) responses. We also summarize some of the technical issues of model-fitting that complicate the fitting of CLMMs even with existing software.
The effects of socioeconomic factors on secular trends in suicide rates in Japan for the periods 1953-72 and 1973-86 were investigated using twelve socioeconomic indicators. Multiple regression analysis showed that the socioeconomic indicators affecting suicide rates were not identical in the two periods. The rates in both sexes in 1953-72 were closely related to unemployment rate and the labour force but between 1973 and 1986, divorce rate and the proportion in tertiary industry were most influential. The changes reflect the socioeconomic changes in industrial structure in Japan in transition from an industrial to a service economy.
PIP
Socioeconomic factors affecting suicide in Japan during the period 1953-1986 are analyzed. Changes over time by age and sex are identified, particularly in relation to changes in economic conditions and employment trends.
A model for comparison of levels of social integration in each of the Nordic countries was developed from Durkheim's theories and then tested on Norwegian and Danish data to determine whether the difference in the frequency of suicide between Norway and Denmark could be "explained" by a corresponding difference in degree of social integration. The results confirmed Durkheim's theory in that the general level of social integration was found to be considerably lower in Denmark than in Norway. Danish middleaged women, whose rate of suicide is more than three times that of their Norwegian counterparts, were especially poorly integrated by comparison. Furthermore, the level of integration among young Norwegian men was found to be in marked decline and their suicide rate on the increase. The necessity of testing and refining the method is stressed.
Sources of error theoretically possible in the registration of suicide are discussed. Using cause-of-death statistics for each of the Nordic countries, the relative influence of the various sources of error is evaluated. Two types of sources of error are identified, one is when cause-of-death is registered as drowning and the other is when it is registered as "unknown". Results have shown however, that the low probability of suicide in these cases, and consequently small numbers involved, could hardly influence differences in rates between the Nordic countries. The differences found in suicide statistics therefore reflect true differences in the frequency of suicide between these countries.
This paper presents a survey of suicide in Denmark from the time when statistics were first kept 100 years ago, up to the present. The remarkable high suicide rate at the start is discussed. The belief that suicide rate is influenced by several factors outside the individual, factors which to some extent can be influenced, is supported by the great variability of the suicide index during the last 100-150 years, being 29.9 in 1861, 12.8 in 1918 and 26 in 1976. The distribution according to sex and age today compared have helped many elements of the population, especially the youngest and the eldest, and especially the men. However, among women 35 to 70 years old and especially those between 45 and 55 the suicide rate has increased. One possible explanation is today's greater number of divorces with all the troubles that follow. Finally, the changing of suicide methods is discussed.