Mental illness and suicide: the sociology of deviance

Question 1

Suicide

Durkheim (1897) studied it with the aim of?

Answer 1

• Showing that sociology is a science
• Using OS, he claimed to have discovered the causes of suicde in how effectively society integrated individuals and regulated their behaviour
• Interactionists reject his approach, they argue that to understand suicide we must study its meanings for those who choose to kill themselves

Question 2

Suicide

What approach does Douglas (1967) take to suicide?

Answer 2

• Interactionist
• Critical of OS and official crime statistics, both socially constructed and tell us about the activities of those who construct them, such as the police (in case of crime) and coroners (in case of suicide), rather than the real rate
• E.G. whether a death is labelled as a sucide or homicide depends on the social actors such as a doctor, relative, coroner etc
• Relatives may feel guility about failing to prevent the death and press for a verdict of misadevture rather than a suicide

Question 3

Suicide

What do the statistics not tell us?

Answer 3

• Nothing about the meanings behind an individuals decision to commit suicide
• To understand meanings better, douglas argues we must use qualitative methods instead, such as the analysis of suicide notes

Question 4

Suicide

What does Atkinson (1978) agree with?

Answer 4

Agrees that OS are merely a record of the labels coroners attach to deaths, he argues that its impossible to know for sure what meanings the dead gave to their deaths

Question 5

Suicide

What does Atkinson focus on ?

Answer 5

• The taken-for-granted assumptions that coroners make when reaching their verdicts
• He found that their ideas about a ‘typical suicide’ were important: certain modes of death (e.g. hanging), location and circumstances were seen as typical of suicides

Question 6

Mental illness

As with crime, interactionists are interested in how a person comes to what?

Answer 6

• Labelled as mentally ill, and in the effects of this labelling
• An example of this is Lemert’s study of paranoia, he notes that some people don’t fit easily into groups, as a result others label this person as odd and begin to exclude him
• His negative response to this is the start of his secondary deviance, and it gives others further reason to exclude him
• His reaction justifies their fears for his mental health, and this may lead to a psychiatric intervention, resulting in being officially labelled and perhaps placed in a hospital against his will
• The label ‘mental patient’ becomes his master status

Question 7

Mental illness

Goffman’s (1961) classic study Asylums shows?

Answer 7

• Some of the possible effects of being admitted to a ‘total institution’ such as a psychiatric hosptital
• On admission, the inmate undergoes a ‘mortification of the self’ in which their old identity is symbolically ‘killed off’ and replaced by a new one: ‘inmate”
• This is achieved by various ‘degradation rituals’, such as confiscation of personal effects
• He also notes that while some imates become institutionalised, others adopt various forms of resistance

Question 7

Evaluation of labelling theory?

Answer 7

• Can be deterministic, implying that once someone is labelled, a deviant career is inevitable
• Tends to focus on less serious crimes like drug-taking
• By assuming that offenders are passive victims of labelling, it ignores the fact that individuals may actively choose deviance
• Fails to explain why people commit primary deviancei in the first place
• It implies that without labelling, deviance wouldnt exist, leads to a strange conculusion that someone who commits a crime but is not labellled has not deviated