Emile Durkheim's Suicide Theory

 

Emile Durkheim is a French sociologist known to be one of the principal founders of modern sociology alongside Karl Marx and Max Weber. He was mainly known for his contributions to both sociology and suicidology through his four writings consisting of: Division of Labor (1893), The Rules of Social Methodology (1895), Suicide (1897), and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). In this case, we will be diving into his writing on Suicide as it integrates perfectly with our topic of homeless veterans. In his writing, he distinguished a correlation between suicide and the individual committing suicide. Although he was not interested in the reasons why someone would take their life, he wanted to if certain social factors would explain the suicide rates. As a result, he revealed the correlation involved the individuals' personal social relationships as well as their level of integration and moral regulation within a society. This allowed Durkheim to articulate four types of suicide that explain why certain individuals commit suicide. The four types of suicide are egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic. Of these four types of suicide,  three of them can be applied to homeless veterans. Anomic suicide can be seen among homeless veterans since it states people are more likely to kill themselves when they do not know what is expected of them and are largely free to run wild. Since they do not know what is expected and whatever they attempt is futile, they opt to commit suicide. Fatalistic suicide is when people are distressed by their lack of freedom they take their own lives. Homeless veterans often struggle with multiple injuries and medications that resulted from their time protecting their country. This forces them to have to live their life with these complications, which feels like they have been stripped of their freedom. Lastly, Egoistic suicide applies to homeless veterans as they are not well integrated into the collectivity of their society. They feel a sense of futility and abandonment making them feel as if they are morally free to kill themselves (Deka 2018). Each of these types of suicides has two things in common, freedom and integration. Both of which can be used to support homeless veterans and minimize the number of homeless people as well as suicide rates. Both Durkheim and Merton have similar resolutions to this continuous issue.  Durkheim proposes that to protect individual well-being, we need protective structural changes made by the collective public (Mueller 2021). These changes will inevitably restore the integrative and regulative functions of homeless veterans, allowing them to pursue a healthy lifestyle. Through Durkheim's findings, we can find ways to drastically influence the lives of homeless veterans and give them the life they deserve!