Suicide in Society: Rational Tendency toward The Right to Die

• In Event: Roundtable: Theory

Abstract

Suicide rates have increased due to the rigorous social tendencies developed regarding human sexuality, body image, and social stereotypes directly affecting the socio-psychological well-being of the social individuals in different age stages. “Understanding suicide has been essential to the sociological enterprise since Durkheim… wrote his famous monograph, arguing that groups that integrated and (morally) regulated their members offered protective benefits against suicide (Abrutyn and Mueller 2014).” The purpose of this research is to examine rational suicide behavior patterns in society in order to better understand any possible social tendency developed toward the idea that if a social individual may approve or not the fact that an individual has the right to commit suicide in certain circumstance, such as a terminal medical condition. Therefore, this study will identify if there is a relationship between education, gender, religion, and social individuals’ attitude toward suicide if tired of living that could help to better understand the development of rational suicide behavior patterns in order to establish a social plan that could reduce or prevent suicides in society while addressing rational suicide as a right to die.

Author

• Michelle Fabiola Parra, University of Central Florida