Mental Illness And Suicide: The Sociology Of Deviance

What did Durkheim study suicide with the aim of doing?

Showing that sociology is a science. Using official statistics, he claimed to have discovered the causes of suicide in low effectively integrated individuals and regulated their behaviour.

Why do interactionists reject Durkheim’s positive approach and reliance on official statistics?

They argue that to understand suicide, we must study its meanings for those who choose to kill themselves.

What approach does Douglas take to suicide?

An interactionist one.

What is Douglas critical of the use of?

Official suicide statistics for the same reasons interactionists distrust official crime statistics: both are socially constructed and they tell us about the activities of the people who constructed them, rather than the real rate of crime of suicide in society.

What does whether a death comes to be officially labelled as a suicide or not depend on?

The interactions between social actors such as the coroner, relatives, friends, doctors and so on.

A relative may feel guilty about failing to prevent the death and press for a verdict of misadventure. Similarly, a coroner with strong religious beliefs that suicide is a sin may be reluctant to bring in a suicide verdict.

What do the statistics tell us about the meanings behind an individual’s decision to commit suicide?

Nothing.

What does Douglas argue?

That we must use qualitative methods, such as the analysis of suicide notes or unstructured interviews with the deceased’s friends or relatives, or with people who survived a suicide attempt, instead of statistics. This would allow us to ‘get behind‘ the labels coroners attach to deaths and discover their true meaning.

What does Atkinson agree with?t

That official statistics are merely a record of the labels coroners attach to deaths. He argues that it is impossible to know for sure what meanings the dead gave to their deaths.

What does Atkinson focus on?

The taken-for-granted assumptions that coroners make when reaching their verdicts.

What did Atkinson find?

That coroners’ ideas about a ‘typical suicide‘ were important: certain modes on the death, location and circumstances of the death and life history were seen as typical of suicide.

How can Atkinson’s approach be used against him?

If he is correct that all we can do is have interpretations of the social world, rather than real facts about it (like how many deaths are actually suicides), then his account is no more than an interpretation and there is no good reason to accept it.

Why do interactionists reject official statistics on mental illness?

Because they regard these as social constructs - simply a record of the activities of those such as psychiatrists with the power to attach labels such as ‘schizophrenic‘ or ‘paranoid‘ to others. Crime, suicide and mental illness are artefacts, not objective social facts.

What are interactionists interested in?

How a person comes to be labelled as mentally ill, and in the effects of this labelling.

What does Lemert note in his study of paranoia?

That some individuals don’t fir easily into groups. As a result of this primary deviance, others label the person as odd and begin to exclude them.

In Lemert’s study of paranoia, what is the negative response the negative labelling and exclusion?

The beginning of their secondary deviance, and it gives others further reason to exclude hm . They may begin discussing the best way of dealing with this difficult person. This seems to confirm the person’s suspicion that people are conspiring against him and 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.

In Lemert’s study , what happens as a result of the person being placed in a hospital against their will?

The label ‘mental patient‘ becomes their master status.

What was Rosenhan’s ‘pseudo-patient experiment‘?

Researchers hadthemselves admitted to a number of hospitals claiming to have been 'hearing voices'.They were diagnosedas schizophrenic and this became their master status.Thus, despite acting normally, they were treated by staff as mentally ill. For example, the pseudo-patients kept notes of their experiences, but staff interpreted this as a symptom of illness.

What does Goffman’s study ‘Asylums‘ show?

Some of the possible effects of being admitted to a ‘total institution‘ such as a psychiatric hospital. 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. Goffman notes the similarities with other total institutions such as prisons, armies, monasteries and boarding schools.

What else does Goffman show?

That while some inmates become institutionalised, internalising their new identity and unable to re-adjust to the outside world, others adopt various forms

What did Braginski et al. find in their study of long-term psychiatric patients?

That inmates manipulated their symptoms so as to appear ‘not well enough‘ to be discharged but ‘not sick enough‘ to be confined to the ward. As a result, they were able to achieve their aim of free movement around the hospital.

What does labelling theory show?

That the law is not a fixed set of rules to be taken for granted, but something whose construction we need to explain. It shows that the law is often enforced in discriminatory ways, and that crime statistics are more a record of the activities of control agents than of criminals. It also shows that society’s attempts to control deviance can backfire and create more.

What are the criticisms of labelling theory?

• It tends to be deterministic, implying that once someone is labelled, a deviant career is inevitable.

• Its emphasis on the negative effects of labelling gives the offender a kind of victim status. Realist sociologists argue that this ignores the real victims of crime.

• It tends to focus on less serious crimes such as drug-taking.

• By assuming that offenders are passive victims of labelling, it ignores the fact that individuals may actively choose deviance.

• It fails to explain why people commit primary deviance in the first place, before they are labelled

• It implies that without labelling, deviance would not exist. This leads to the strange conclusion that someone who commits a crime but is not labelled has not deviated. It also implies that deviants are unaware that they are deviant until labelled. Yet most are well aware that they are going against social norms.

• It recognises the role of power in creating deviance, but it fails to analyse the source of this power. As a result, it focuses on 'middle range officials' such as policemen who apply the labels, rather than on the capitalist class who (in the view of Marxists) make the rules in the first place. It also fails to explain the origin of the labels, or why they are applied to certain groups, such as the working class.