Ronald W. Maris

SOCIAL AND FAMILIAL RISK FACTORS IN SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR

The focus of this article is on the presence or absence of external and constraining social facts, as reflected in indicators like divorce rate, marital status, the number of close friends, loss of crucial significant others, or sometimes having no one who cares if the person lives or dies, feelings of shame or intolerable guilt, the belief of sacrificing ones life for a higher cause or another person, and military suicide. This article reviews the history of the sociology of suicide, social isolation, contagion, imitation, suicide clusters, stress, and negative life events.

The Developmental Perspective of Suicide

In 1981, I wrote: Virtually everyone engaged in suicide research agrees that it is time to move from static, structural, descriptive profiles of self-destructive behaviors to dynamic developmental models. Suicidal lethality (the probability of committing suicide) varies over time and among different types of individuals (and groups). It is argued here that the suicide’s biography or “career” is always relevant to his or her self-destructive reaction to crises and that it is precisely this history, individual or group, which tends to be neglected. (Maris, 1981, p.9)