Suicide and Durkheim

Suicide is perhaps the most personal action an individual can take upon oneself and yet it has a profound social impact. Perhaps this is because social relationships play such an important role in its causation. It is also, perhaps the least understood crime, or act, due to the fact that obviously, the dead can’t speak. Emile Durkheim was instrumental in bringing a new understanding of suicide, when in a sociological study he conceived his …

…how to deal with suicide. Suicide is an extremely personal act, and while it does have profound social impact, it is not possible to disregard the individual’s personal conflicts that drove him to commit suicide. While macro studies of suicide, as Durkheim has done, is instrumental in seeing the entirety of the phenomenon, a more in depth, micro study should be undertaken to comprehend what predisposes certain individuals to commit suicide, more than others.