Suicide - Research Paper Example

Sociologists have been trying to calculate the suicide rates for over a hundred years. Unfortunately the “shock-wave” that a single suicide generates is so powerful that the statistical rarity becomes disproportionate (Baudelot & Establet 2008). In countries like the United States, suicide is not as frequent amongst the civilians as it is amongst the people belonging to the military. Hence, the social stigma of suicide in the United States and the European countries remains a matter of fear and disgust combined with feelings of contempt and lack of compassion (Joiner 2010).

Suicide may be rationally defined as a voluntary act chosen by an individual who wants to die because the situation he has caught himself in is irretrievable and cannot be transformed (Diekstra & WHO 1989). The disgrace it carries with it for the communities especially in the United States is due to the fact that it indicates not only immoral behavior on the part of that individual but also the family who falls victim of this crime. Most of the cases in the U.S. have been connected with wartimes and the percentage of suicide committed amongst the soldiers and the army men is higher than ordinary civilians.

Suicide usually has a history in the family. There are several generations in the family who have been indulged in this course of action and hence it becomes rather difficult for the sociologist to come up with a sensible reason for such an act. Modern therapists and thinkers have however come to believe that suicide may be acceptable at some point in a person’s life. Survivors of suicide end up in alcoholism and other lethal activities which becomes a threat for the community. The rate of depression is extremely high in the United States.

Researches associate the suicide rates to the ethnic groups that exist simultaneously among the natives. This is surprisingly one of the main reasons of suicide especially among adults or elderly people who have gone through traumas in their life which they cannot share with anyone. War, loss of a family member, depression, broken families and crashing businesses are some of the risk factors which influence suicide among this age group (Retterstol 1993). In places where there are broken families, a person wanting to commit suicide is disheartened by his own situation and position in the family.

He is likely to compare himself with privileged people around him and ends up having a very low self-esteem like in many other cases. Broken families are usually a result of some tragic or tabooed incident in the past which give rise to feelings of anxiety and hopelessness. Similarly a person whose business is crashing is likely to be affected with the downfall more severely than his team of people. If he has a depressing personality he would shut himself from the rest of the world and let the feeling of failure grow inside him.

Eventually he would grow tired of his life and end it himself (Retterstol 1993). As opposed to the causes of suicide seen in the United States, other countries which are categorized as the third world countries such as Pakistan are confronted with altogether separate sets of causes of suicide. Pakistan is a nation which never recovered from the trauma of partition in 1947. A series of events caused the citizens to believe that they are doomed for life. With the