Suicide Research Paper ⋆ Research Paper Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This sample Suicide Research Paper is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need help writing your assignment, please use our research paper writing service and buy a paper on any topic at affordable price. Also check our tips on how to write a research paper, see the lists of research paper topics, and browse research paper examples.

Suicide can be the outcome of an individual’s difficult and stressful experiences or a response to an unbearable situation. Sometimes suicide is complicated by drug and/or alcohol use. The scope of suicide includes all ages, classes, races, and sexes, although some groups are at more risk than others. Children or family members of those who have attempted or completed suicide are more likely themselves to attempt or complete suicide, as suicide has a ripple effect and can convey the idea that self-destruction is an acceptable solution to distress. Casualties of suicide, or those left behind, experience traumatic grief, guilt, shame, stress, and self-doubt—sometimes keeping them from speaking of the event at all. Statistics of suicide are underrepresented and not always reliable because the action can be classified in some other way; legally, suicidal components must be established beyond a doubt. Additionally, it is sometimes difficult to categorize the intentionality of death.

Suicide rates are higher for those who suffer from depression or other psychiatric problems; use drugs or alcohol when depressed; suffer from physical, especially irreversible, illness; are divorced; have lost an important relationship through death or breakup; and live in certain areas. War combatants also face a high rate of suicide because of post-traumatic stress disorders. People with HIV/AIDS are at risk, with the decision of suicide based on the fear of loss of function or increase in suffering and the feeling of being isolated. In “suicide by cop” incidents, an armed suicidal individual forces a law officer to use deadly force resulting in death. Individuals name various other reasons for suicide, including as a means to reunite with the dead, a means to ensure rest and refuge, a way to take revenge, and a penalty for failure.

Durkheim’s Studies

In 1897 the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) conducted a study of suicide in France. He found lower suicide rates among women, Catholics, Jews, and married people and higher rates among men, Protestants, wealthy people, and unmarried individuals. Based on the data, he argued that categories of people with strong social ties had low suicide rates, and that categories of people with the lowest social integration had the highest suicide rates. Durkheim believed that too much or too little integration or regulation (cohesion) was unhealthy for society and accordingly established four conditions that can lead to suicide: (1) altruism, or too much integration, a willingness to sacrifice the self for the group’s ostensible interest (e.g., suicide bombers); (2) egoism, or too little integration (e.g., those not bound to social groups left with little guidance); (3) fatalism, or too much regulation with no perceived way out of a situation (e.g., slaves); and (4) anomie, or too little regulation and no fulfillment of needs (e.g., those coping with the death of a spouse, economic depression, institutional failure, or wealth insufficient to provide happiness). Durkheim focused on anomie as an unhealthy and destructive pathological state for society, resulting in a “milky-way-galaxy” of choices for normative behavior (read “normlessness”) and a lack of social regulation.

American Demographic Data

In the United States, suicide ranks eleventh on the list of causes of death. Suicides occur most often among white males, and the rate increases with age; older white males have the highest suicide rates in the nation. Females and nonwhite males reach their peak for suicide vulnerability earlier in adult life. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in the age group fifteen to twenty-four. Bad economic times are usually associated with an increase of suicide rates. Rates for Native Americans are the highest of any ethnic population in the nation.

Suicide rates tend to be higher in areas where people live far apart from each other; more densely populated states have lower suicide rates. Accordingly, the highest suicide rates are in the western states, with Wyoming and Alaska at the top of the list, although California is ranked as having one of the lowest rates. The middle and eastern states are ranked lower in suicide rates than the western states (with the District of Columbia and Massachusetts as the lowest), although Vermont, West Virginia, and Oklahoma are ranked as high. Most of the New England states are ranked as having the lowest rates of suicide.

Suicide Among The Elderly

Since 1990, in the United States there has been an increase in suicide rates in individuals eighty-five years or older, although suicide in the elderly does not elicit the same response as it does in younger individuals. Elderly individuals are more likely to be socially isolated for a longer time before death and are more likely to experience physical illness, other sources of distress and depression, and loss of relationships, making them at higher risk for suicide. Elders are less likely to give warning signs of suicide.

Teen Suicide And The Family

Since the 1980s the general incidence of suicide has increased in the United States; the rate for those between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four has tripled. Although suicide among adolescents is seriously underreported, researchers generally consider it to be the second- or third-most common cause of death in that group. More than eight out of ten kids who threaten suicide attempt it; females make more suicide attempts, although more males complete suicide, with firearms or explosives the most common method of self-destruction. Half of all children who have made one suicide attempt will make another, sometimes as many as two a year until they succeed. The majority of suicide attempts are expressions of extreme distress and not merely bids for attention; this distress is often related to others prior to suicide. Additionally, some children who take their own lives are indeed the opposite of the rebellious teen. They are anxious, insecure kids who have a desperate desire to be liked, to fit in, and do well. Their expectations are so high that they demand too much of themselves, thereby condemning themselves to constant disappointment. A traumatic event (such as the loss of a valued relationship or a change of residence), which can seem minor viewed from an adult perspective, is enough to push children and adolescents over the edge into a severe depression. Alcohol and drug use are associated with heightened suicide risk in youth.

The role of the family is also a variable in teen suicide. Two-thirds of suicidal teens report poor relationships with their parents. Increased levels of suicidal behavior in adolescents is associated with certain family characteristics: rigid rules, poor communication, overbearing parents, and long-term patterns of family dysfunction such as alcoholism and mental illness.

Physician-Assisted Suicide

In some cases an individual may be too incapacitated by illness to end his or her life without assistance. The ethics of physician-assisted suicide, or euthanasia, has been the subject of vigorous debate. Active euthanasia refers to direct action being used to end a life; passive euthanasia refers to not taking steps to prolong life or “letting die.” Some argue that active euthanasia respects the principle of individual autonomy and the right to self-determination, that its foremost concert is the patient’s well-being, and that it adheres to the physician’s Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, where doing no harm means alleviating pain and respecting the wishes of a rational person. Many argue that a decision to kill oneself with the assistance of a physician is a private choice that society has no right to regulate; others argue that assisted suicide threatens the moral foundations of society.

International Demographic Data

Suicide rates vary from nation to nation, with Belarus, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Federation having the highest suicide rates in the world. Suicide rates for men are substantially higher in all countries and are also high for indigenous populations who have been exploited, discriminated against, and deprived of their previous cultural existence. China is undergoing a national suicide crisis, with 21 percent of the world’s population, 44 percent of the world’s suicides, and 56 percent of the world’s female suicides. Those in China at a higher risk of suicide live in rural areas or areas where the government has policies that have increased stress through the disruption of traditional family patterns. Some argue that this level of suicidal behavior has changed attitudes in China about suicide, with self-destruction coming to be seen as an acceptable action.

Other Manifestations Of Suicide

Suicide can also occur as a group response to extreme situations, notable examples being the mass suicide at the Masada fortress in 73 ce by besieged Jews choosing death over defeat by the Romans; the Jonestown cult’s mass murder-suicides in Guyana in 1978; and the Heaven’s Gate cult suicides in southern California in 1997.

Suicide bombings by terrorist groups became a phenomenon in the late twentieth century. Terrorism constitutes random acts of violence or the threat of such violence as a political or religious strategy, and suicide bombing is one of these strategies. The attacks of September 11, 2001, show how self-destruction can be used as a weapon.

The act of suicide has been interpreted in many ways and given various meanings. In Christianity and Judaism, suicide is sinful and forbidden. Historically, many societies have viewed suicide as a crime and have enacted laws to regulate the act and punish those who attempt it. Those who attempt or commit suicide have often been seen as psychotic or mentally ill; by contrast, in some cultures suicide is viewed as an honorable and glorious death. Some approve of suicide when it is seen as the only option left to alleviate pain and suffering from severe illness. Freud understood suicide as a drive or death instinct; from an existentialist standpoint, suicide removes the necessary choice for authentic existence.

Bibliography:

Beckerman, N. L. 1995. Suicide in Relation to AIDS. Death Studies 19 (3): 223–234.
Brock, Dan W. 1994. Voluntary Active Euthanasia. In Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, 4th ed., eds. Tom L. Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Colt, George Holt. 1991. The Enigma of Suicide. New York: Summit.
Conwell, Y. 2001. Suicide in Later Life: A Review and Recommendation for Prevention. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 31 (Suppl.): 32–47.
Crosby, A. E., M. P. Cheltenham, and J. J. Sacks. 1999. Incidence of Suicide Ideation and Behavior in the United States, 1994. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 29 (2): 131–140.
Durkheim, Émile. 1951. Suicide. Trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simpson, ed. George Simpson. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Freud, Sigmund. [1917] 1959. Mourning and Melancholia. In Collected Papers. Trans. Joan Riviere, Vol. 4, 152–172. New York: Basic Books.
Hendin, Herbert. 1995. Suicide in America, expanded ed. New York: Norton.
Kastenbaum, Robert. 2000. The Psychology of Death. 3rd ed. New York: Springer.
Kochanek, Kenneth D., et al. 2004. Deaths: Final Data for 2002. National Vital Statistics Report 53 (5). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.
Leenaars, Anton A., and Susanne Wenckstern. 1991. Suicide Prevention in Schools. New York: Hemisphere.
Mancinelli, I., A. Comparelli, P. Girardi, and R. Tatarelli. 2002. Mass Suicide: Historical and Psychodynamic Considerations. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 32 (1): 91–100.
Minois, Georges. 1999. History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture. Trans. Lydia G. Cochrane. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Murray, Alexander. 1998–2000. Suicide in the Middle Ages. 2 vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. 2002. Substance Use and the Risk of Suicide Among Youths.
http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k2/suicide/suicide.htm.National Vital Statistics Reports: Deaths (2002).
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_10.pdf. Osgood, Nancy J. 1992. Suicide in Later Life. New York: Lexington.
Pedahzur, Ami. 2004. Suicide Terrorism. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.
Pellegrino, Edmund D. 1994. The Virtuous Physician and the Ethics of Medicine. In Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, 4th ed., eds. Tom L. Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters. Belmont,CA: Wadsworth, 1994.
Phillips, M. R., H. Liu, and Y. Zhang. 1999. Suicide and Social Change in China. Medicine and Psychiatry 23 (1): 25–50.
Rachels, James. 1994. The Distinction between Active Killing and Allowing to Die. In Contemporary Issues in Bioethics, 4th ed., eds. Tom L. Beauchamp and LeRoy Walters. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Reisman, David. [1961] 2000. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Reuter, Christoph. 2002. My Life Is a Weapon: A Modern Historyof Suicide Bombing. Trans. Helena Ragg-Kirkby. Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press.