Suicide Bereavement and Social Relationships: A New Application of Durkheim
Facing Death: Familial Responses to Illness and Death
ISBN: 978-1-80382-264-8, eISBN: 978-1-80382-263-1
Publication date: 16 June 2022
Abstract
Purpose: The author seeks to identify how suicide-bereaved individuals conceptualize their relationships with deceased loved ones. The author engages Durkheim’s theory of suicide to provide a new framework to analyze this population.
Methodology: The author uses qualitative research and coding methods to produce a secondary analysis of previously collected interview transcripts.
Findings: The author concludes that participants experience the suicide of a loved one as a social event, conceptualizing it similarly to how Durkheim defined his four suicide types – characterized by too much or too little regulation and/or integration.
Research Limitations: As a result of the secondary analysis, a lack of demographic information remains the largest limitation, and the available demographic information indicates the participant population is not a diverse one. Therefore, the larger analysis is limited.
Practical and Social Implications: This work provides potential ways to improve current prevention and postvention practices for both the suicide-bereaved and those struggling with suicidality. Subsequently, it may help to improve the health outcomes of these groups.
Originality: To the author’s current knowledge, this is the first published use of Durkheim’s Suicide (1897/1966) as a framework to directly examine the suicide-bereaved population in this way. Thus, this work contributes to suicidology and sociology more broadly in two ways: by providing a new way to understand and ultimately help a vulnerable population and by providing a new use of a classic theory.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments:
This project uses data originally collected by Anna S. Mueller, Ph.D., of Indiana University Bloomington and Seth Abrutyn, Ph.D., of University of British Columbia. Data collection was supported by research funds from the University of Memphis. This analysis and content are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Mueller or Abrutyn. The author thanks both Mueller and Abrutyn providing access to the de-identified data.
Some of this work was originally produced in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. The author thanks faculty advisor Dr Eugene Raikhel, Ph.D., and program preceptor Sophie Fajardo, M.A., for their feedback and supervision for that work. The author also thanks Sanja Miklin, M.A., for her feedback on that piece. However, this manuscript is solely the author’s responsibility and does not necessarily represent the views of Raikhel, Fajardo, and Miklin. Finally, the author thanks all peer reviewers for their insightful comments.
Citation
McGrath, K. (2022), "Suicide Bereavement and Social Relationships: A New Application of Durkheim", Scott, C.L., Williams, H.M. and Wilder, S. (Ed.) Facing Death: Familial Responses to Illness and Death (Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research, Vol. 19), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 169-189. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1530-353520220000019008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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