摘要:

ABSTRACT:From Durkheim's time to the present social researchers interested in the problem of suicide have relied upon officially reported rates of suicide to develop and test their theories. Despite the fact that the validity of any theory rests upon the accuracy of its underlying data, the relative accuracy of reported suicide rates have rarely been questioned or systematically evaluated. This paper investigates the process of death certification as practiced by a sample of 191 coroners in 11 western states. Findings indicate extensive variation in the backgrounds, professional resources, operating procedures, and governing statutes of coroners and coroners' offices and in policies concerning the use of the suicide mode. Since the coroner is generally charged with the official responsibility for certifying the mode of death when unnatural mode is suspect, the extent of variation found here calls into question the validity and comparability of reported suicide rates.

ISSN:0363-0234    

DOI:10.1111/j.1943-278X.1978.tb00552.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1978

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT:Several writers have argued that a majority of suicidal acts are “gambles with death.” A distinction is made between cases where the gamble with death is merely consequential (i.e., arising from ignorance, apathy, indifference) and cases where it is the very essence of the act. Typically in these latter cases others are excluded from possible intervention. The individual is thus playing a game of “pure” chance. Death is summoned and challenged in order that life may continue. It is argued, from an interactionist perspective, that such acts are desperate efforts to confirm existence in situations of extreme uncertainty and represent a distinct form of what Shneidman has called “egotic

ISSN:0363-0234    

DOI:10.1111/j.1943-278X.1978.tb00553.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1978

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT:This paper explores the relationships among culture, character, and suicide. It draws on the author's research in Scandinavia and his studies of suicide among United States urban blacks and college students. The differences in motivation and significance of suicide in Sweden and Denmark are illustrated. The United States is an amalgam of subcultures which must be studied separately to identify the psychosocial determinants of behavior. The varying rates and motivations for suicide in different cultures and subcultures, the differences between men and women, between young and old, differences in ways of coping with love and loss, life and death make clear that suicide is part of a culture's possibilities. The varying psychodynamic ways in which the suicidal individual in differing cultures and subcultures conceives of, uses, and absorbs death also has much to tell us about how we live.

ISSN:0363-0234    

DOI:10.1111/j.1943-278X.1978.tb00554.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1978

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0363-0234    

DOI:10.1111/j.1943-278X.1978.tb00555.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1978

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0363-0234    

DOI:10.1111/j.1943-278X.1978.tb00556.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1978

数据来源: WILEY