The social dimension of suicide

The social dimension of suicide

It is understandable that families of victims of suicide wanted that people should be more considerate by not overly pestering them with unresolved questions and issues concerning the unspoken motives of the victims and on the unearthing of antecedent episodes of the suicide phenomena. However, this should not be construed that the acts of suicide work in a vacuum. We cannot simply regard suicides as personal affairs of the concerned families nor they are simply regarded as personal misfortunes of the victims and hence society has no business with them. This is a myopic view.

Committing suicide is not a one-sided individual act. Suicide is a social act. It is not attributed to the personal guilt alone of the victim. Behind every act of suicide are a social environment and a society that give unduly pressure to the victim to commit suicide. Suicide is contagious that it instigates other members of the society who are similarly situated with the victim to commit the same horrid act. It also reveals the social attitudes of the members like allowing them to condemn the act of suicide or to sympathize with the victim and the family. Families then of victims of suicide cannot preclude members of the society to wonder and speculate stories surrounding the acts of suicide.

Sociologist Emile Durkheim says that suicide is associated with societal crises of economic or social nature. That is why society is involved when a member of it commits suicide. Suicide presupposes societal ills. It reflects the problems of society like unemployment, immorality, financial constraints, which contributed to the mental and physical isolation of the victim. A hopeless victim prefers to commit suicide rather than living in society that is cruel and unfriendly.

Finally, suicide does not only offend the victim nor the family. It wounds and disturbs the society as a whole. From the Christian point of view, suicide as a sin has a social dimension. St. Paul says that Christians “are the body of Christ and individually members of it” such that if one member is hopeless, all other members suffer from it.