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Thorfinn Stainforth Dr. Barkow Research Essay April 11, 2002 Suicide: Two Approaches

Section I: Introducing the Problem Suicide is a problem that has faced human society since its beginning. Suicide is both terrifying and captivating for most people. It kills a very high number of people all over the world, for example, about 40 000 Americans killed themselves in 1966.1 This ranks it among the leading causes of death, and that does not take into account attempted suicides, which number about 8 times the number of completed suicides. Suicide rates vary significantly between different communities, even culturally similar ones. It is a difficult phenomenon to explain, but it is also important to explain it due to its impact on society. Many otherwise healthy, vital, and valuable people kill themselves at great cost to society. Consequently there have been many attempts to explain why they do so. There are many commonalities between these theories, but also differences. Different fields have taken different approaches and have come to different conclusions. One of the main differences between the evolutionary approach to suicide, and the traditional social approach is that some evolutionists do not think that suicide is necessarily an expression of a personal problem, but a normal reaction of a human being to their circumstances. Section II: The Social Science Approach There have been many attempts to explain suicide by social scientists from various fields. One of the major influences on the field was the sociologist, Emile Durkheim, who believed that there was a direct correlation between religion and suicide rate. He believed that Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than non Protestants. He explained this by saying the suicide rate varies inversely with the level of external constraint, which he claims led to more protestant suicides. Durkeheim’s theories have largely been discredited, though his methodology have been highly influential. Durkheim did not acknowledge that psychological factors had a role in determining whether someone would commit suicide. Today, almost all theorists on the subject accept that psychology plays a major role. Social scientists have not been able to generate a general theory of suicide that is generally accepted to replace Durkheim’s. They have, however, found many individual, limited theories of what causes suicide in certain cases. Social scientists have paid a lot of attention to the difference between different groups, such as the sexes, races, and income groups, to explain suicide. They have found that men are more likely to commit suicide, but women are more likely to attempt suicide. It has been theorized that women are “crying out for help” when they attempt suicide, and are therefore not really trying to commit suicide, but attract attention to themselves. The theory is that men want to be seen as confident and competent in taking the decisive action of killing themselves. Theories of the effects of age on suicide have changed over time. At first it was believed that the older someone was, the more likely they were to kill themselves. However, new research in western countries indicates that men are more likely to kill themselves as they get older, but women's rate peaks around the age of 35 and then stays level until they are 85 when it begins to drop again. The explanation for older men killing themselves is that they become increasingly isolated and irrelevant to society, leading to a feeling of loneliness and uselessness. Loneliness and social isolation are often cited as causes of suicide in both sexes, but the explanation for why women follow the pattern that they do is often said to be because female suicides are usually related to marital problems. Marital problems are likely to appear earlier in life than men's problems with feelings of uselessness. Theories about the effects of social status are diverse. This is partly the result of the difficulty of quantifying social status. Some theorists believe that suicide rates increase, the higher your perceived social status, due to higher expectations. Many believe that suicide goes up, the lower you are, because of frustration with the low status. Some others believe that suicide goes up only if your relative position remains unchanged. Your overall rank has no effect, but if you move up, or at least change position in some way, even vertically, your chances of committing suicide decrease.2 Differences in rates between races have also been intensively studied, but these studies are generally inconclusive. It has often been said that whites commit suicide more often than other races, but these are generally found in limited studies conducted only in one culture. Different studies can present very different results depending on where the study is conducted, so their findings have not been able to prove very much. Other factors, such as alcoholism, drug use, depression, and mental health have also been used to explain suicide in sociological way, but are rejected by some sociologists, except as expressions of other factors such as poverty. Section III: The Evolutionary Approach There are several different evolutionary interpretations of suicide. Denys de Catanzaro has conducted a lot of research into this field. Others, such as Donald H. Rubinstein, and Anne Campbell have also done work in this field. The major difficulty for evolutionists is to explain why an organism would so deliberately harm its own potential reproductive capacity. Suicide seems to be perhaps the ultimate maladaptive trait, other than, perhaps, infanticide of your own children. De Catanzaro begins to explain suicide by saying that differential reproduction is in fact much more important to evolution than is “survival of the fittest.” That is to say, that mere survival is not particularly important to passing on genes. Even if someone is short lived, but reproduces a lot, they are likely to have more descendants than someone who lives a long time but does not reproduce very much. The other factor in explaining suicide from the evolutionary perspective is inclusive fitness. Since an individual will share many genes with their relatives, it is in their evolutionary interest to ensure their relatives’ survival and reproduction. More of their genes will be present in subsequent generations. This theory is used to explain the appearance of menopause in human women, since they will be of more successful in ensuring the survival of their descendants by helping to rear grandchildren than they would be in having more children of their own. Inclusive fitness explains a great deal of the altruism that is present in our, and other, species. De Catanzaro believes that a general theory of suicide can be formed based on a calculation of the “costs of an individual’s immediate death to the propagation of his or her genes.”3 He developed a very complex equation that takes the various factors of the subject’s potential reproduction, such as dependency of children, remaining reproductive potential, dependance on kin, and others, into account and is able to predict whether the subject is likely to commit suicide or not. De Catanzaro, and various other researchers such as Dr. Brown, Dahlen, Mills, Rick, and Biblarz support this conclusion, though they admit that further research is necessary to confirm the theory.4 Current research has been conducted mostly in the United States, with a large portion of the sample being young, educated, and religious. According to de Catanzaro’s variables, the people that are most likely to commit suicide include, the elderly, especially those who are a burden on their family, anyone who is ostracized by their kin, someone unable to provide for their kin, dependent on their reproductively capable kin, or anyone who has difficulty relating with the opposite sex. All of these conditions will lead to emotional and psychological conditions that will make suicide more likely. De Catanzaro cites studies that show that emotions have a physiological basis to show that the self destructive response may be a natural, evolved response to their situation to ensure the continued propagation of one’s genes. According to this theory those mostly likely to kill themselves would be the elderly dependent on financially pressed children, or someone with little hope of reproducing who is also dependent of kin. Dr. de Catanzaro’s theory can also be applied to general self preservation. It can be used to predict how likely a mother or father is to sacrifice herself to save her children, or other situations of that sort. De Catanzaro takes pains to recognize that his formula is only a base on which to predict likelihood of suicide or self sacrifice. He freely acknowledges that suicide is partially a learned behaviour, as is evidenced by the phenomenon of groupings of suicides occurring in short periods of time. He believes that there are many cultural phenomena that will affect any given individual. De Catanzaro also places strong emphasis on the fact that modern expressions of suicide may sometimes be unpredictable because we are in a different environment from that which we evolved in. He believes that there are many more suicides today than there would be in our “natural” environment due to stress and our confrontation with many situations that we have not been selected to deal with. Another researcher, Rubinstein also emphasizes the stresses of our modern environment. He agrees with de Catanzaro that modern societies are much more impersonal, leading to a frequent separation from kin groups. This separation will lead to people feeling less connected to their relatives, and perhaps more likely to commit suicide since they cannot help their kin.5 He goes into some detail about the chemical basis of these feelings, and argues that they are an evolutionary response that is triggered by our society much more often than they would have been in the past. He also stresses the fact that the likelihood for suicide goes up in people who have a low possibility of promoting the transmission of their own genes, such as the ill, the elderly, or those experiencing hopelessness about their own future prospects of happiness or success. His theories are based on, and compatible with, de Catanzaro’s. Anne Campbell has a different approach. She does not explain the underlying causes of suicide, as much as she explains the differences in suicide patterns between the sexes. She argues that men commit suicide more often than women because they do not value their lives as much as women. Since men are not essential to the survival of their offspring, and their potential for reproduction is much more varied, men have evolved to be less fearful of taking risks than women have. If a woman under natural conditions were to die, her children would most likely die as well. Therefore women have evolved to be more fearful of death and physical risk than men, and are therefore more likely to commit suicide. She believes that suicide is just an expression of males’ general willingness to take risks.6 Section IV: The Comparison Are the various social science ideas about suicide compatible with the evolutionary model? For the most part yes. The two categories of explanation are compatible with each other. For example, both explanations generally agree that loneliness leads to suicide. The evolutionary model says that this is because we have traditionally lived in smaller groups, closer to our kin, and we have evolved to have a need to help them and be near to them. There is nothing about that statement that counters the social science argument. The social science explanation of the difference between the sexes is compatible with evolutionary thinking. Women would be more troubled by problems in their marital situation because they are ultimately going to be responsible for the welfare of the children in the event of marital breakdown. Men would be more troubled by problems with their ability to work because of their preoccupation with their their status. Evolutionary thought can be used to help gauge the relative merits of theories on social status. According to evolutionary theory, suicide rates should go up as status lowers, since that would decrease potential, both to provide for offspring, and to father many children. However, since our society is mostly monogamous this might have little effect on the suicide rate. De Catanzaro’s theory explains why lower status individuals or individuals changing in rank would be less likely to commit suicide, but it does not explain the theories that lower status categories would commit suicide. However Campbell or Rubinstein might explain it. If Campbell’s theory is correct, the higher status individuals are probably also risk takers, and aggressive, which would explain a higher suicide rate. Or, according to Rubinstein, they might be more separated from their kin than lower status individuals. Both types of theory stress that isolated individuals are more likely to commit suicide. This makes sense in both accounts, since it makes intuitive sense. Evolutionary theory can help to explain it. These individuals would also be likely to take drugs, or consumer excess alcohol, factors which are likely to throw the body out of balance and perhaps confuse systems designed by evolution to lead to suicide or self sacrifice. Modern society is confusing for behaviours evolved in a completely different environment.