Overview
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ASSIGNMENT: Please respond to the classmate’s discussion post below:
No, suicide is not universally condemned. Durkheim's famous work on suicide highlighted that suicide has various meanings across cultures. Some suicides are seen as honorable sacrifices, such as kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers. Seppuku reflected a culture of tradition and respect, allowing a soldier to control his death to avoid the shame of defeat or capture. On the other end of the spectrum, some in society feel suicide is a cowardly act or selfish. They feel the person doesn't consider how traumatic it would be for their loved one to discover them. Still others reference that the one of the most famous suicides in the Bible was that of Judas Iscariot, and extrapolate from this that suicide is evidence of some alienation from God. Regardless of one's cultural views, the fact remains that suicide is something that can only be understood by the person. There seems to be an intrinsic human desire to live, so many of us balk at the idea of someone taking their own life. But few people understand the depth of mental anguish, or, more tangibly, the pain of a crippling illness or injury. Having lost a family member to suicide, and knowing the horror it inflicted on his wife who discovered him, while also being a person who has struggled with severe depression, I can understand the standpoint of both sides.
We cannot discuss suicide and ignore contextual stressors - for instance, American Indians, among the most vulnerable demographics in the United States, face poverty, lack of access to resources, and problems with substance dependency. They are also sorely underrepresented in research because of misidentification on forms pertaining race. Is it any wonder then, their suicide rate is double the national average (Suicide Among Young American Indians Nearly Double National Rate, 2015)? Should suicide be condemned to the exclusion of judging a system that has been failing the only actual rightful inhabitants of this country for quite literally centuries? Furthermore, regardless of your personal views on war, what can we make of military suicides? Why don't people who made the supposed ultimate sacrifice have unfettered access to the mental health resources in the nation? What do we make of a machismo culture that creates a cognitive dissonance between the actual mental strain of combat and the "toughness" that the military is supposed to endow predominately male recruits with? Or, as the source material points out, why does combat seem to attract recruits predisposed to anger issues and mood disorders (Suicide Among Young American Indians Nearly Double National Rate, 2015)? Investigating suicide as deviance certainly requires a wholistic viewpoint that, as much as possible, is not limited by our personal experiences and values.
PBS News Hour. (2014, March 5). New study links pre-existing risks to rise in Army suicides. PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-study-links-pre-existing-risks-rise-army-suicides
Suicide among young American Indians nearly double national rate. (2015, September 30). PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/suicide-rate-among-young-american-indians-nearly-double-national-average