4252 - Social Factors and Suicide: New Developments

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

As in Durkheim's times, the psychiatric/biological paradigm continues to dominate suicide studies. Psychiatric models stress individual centered constructs including mental disorders, such as major depression, brain chemistry, and genetic risk factors. In contrast, sociologists have linked suicidality to external factors such as (a) cultural constructs including the culture of perfectionism, suicide acceptability, strains between opposed value systems, and gender roles; (b) the state of institutional and social life including immigration, labor market strains, marriage and family integration, religiousness, the strength of social networks,and exposure to suicide in significant others. Sociologists offer some answers to the puzzle of what holds back millions of persons at psychiatric risk from suiciding? The present panel brings together a group of leading researchers on sociological interpretations of suicidality. Collectively they present a challenge, as did Durkheim, to the still dominant psychiatric perspective on suicide.

Sub Unit

• Special Session

Session Organizer

• Steven Stack, Wayne State University

Presider

• William Feigelman, Nassau Community College

Individual Presentations

• How Does Immigration Affect Suicide? Analysis of U.S. Metropolitan Areas - Julie A. Phillips, Rutgers University

• The Social Roots of Adolescent Suicide - Seth Abrutyn, University of British Columbia; Anna S. Mueller, Indiana University

• Networks and Suicide Risk: New Developments - Bernice A. Pescosolido, Indiana University

• Reducing Suicide Rates: What Lessons We Should Learn from China - Jie Zhang, State University of New York College at Buffalo

Discussant

• Matt Wray, Temple University