If people are interested in this, I would really recommending taking a gander at Emile Durkheim’s ‘Suicide’. He was one of the first sociologists, and attempted to apply his methodology to what one might think the most private decision: suicide. After noticing that the annual rate of suicide was fairly stable, and varied from group to group, he tried to come up with a sociological explanation for this.
He has three categories of suicide:
Egoistic: this occurs when people are poorly socially integrated—they feel isolated or lack social roots, This is similar to the type of thing mentioned by commenters who talked about the importance of religion.
Altruistic: the opposite of egoistic (and far less common) - when value their group so much they are willing to sacrifice themselves for it.
Anomic: this is the most interesting, and relevant to the original post. He claims that suicide can occur as a reaction to sudden jolting changes, upheaval and disequilibrium. This can happen with a sudden loss or a sudden gain in status/wealth/etc: you get anomic suicides in busts (bankers jumping out of windows) and booms (lottery winners who can’t handle their new situation).
Of course there’s quite a bit to criticize him about, but it’s very interesting stuff.
If people are interested in this, I would really recommending taking a gander at Emile Durkheim’s ‘Suicide’. He was one of the first sociologists, and attempted to apply his methodology to what one might think the most private decision: suicide. After noticing that the annual rate of suicide was fairly stable, and varied from group to group, he tried to come up with a sociological explanation for this.
He has three categories of suicide:
Egoistic: this occurs when people are poorly socially integrated—they feel isolated or lack social roots, This is similar to the type of thing mentioned by commenters who talked about the importance of religion.
Altruistic: the opposite of egoistic (and far less common) - when value their group so much they are willing to sacrifice themselves for it.
Anomic: this is the most interesting, and relevant to the original post. He claims that suicide can occur as a reaction to sudden jolting changes, upheaval and disequilibrium. This can happen with a sudden loss or a sudden gain in status/wealth/etc: you get anomic suicides in busts (bankers jumping out of windows) and booms (lottery winners who can’t handle their new situation).
Of course there’s quite a bit to criticize him about, but it’s very interesting stuff.