The controversy: Is Suicide Deterministic?

Anomie is a state of normlessness where there is no clear guidelines to behave. People experiencing anomie would undergo a series of aimlessness, purposelessness, anxiety and disorientation of feelings. This is not a stage that can be prolonged because the "natural" workings of society would self-adjust itself towards a new social equilibrium. However, if this state persists over a long period of time, suicide may be a consequence. An anomic suicide, due to lack of social regulation.

It is saddening and critical to think that an anomic state is actually in existent in some individuals. More interesting is the question of how this state can even be prolonged to extreme ends, leading to suicide. It is a complex sociological stand to even attempt to categorise suicide into a positivist or a phenemenological school. The difficulty lies in the fact that suicide appears to be both an "individual" decision as well as a result of external pressures.

While suicide appears to be a very personal, fundamentally psychological phenomena which revolves around the individual and his state of mind, Durkheim's suicidal analysis seems to indicate an identifiable pattern of such a phenomenon. The identification of clusters of incidents seems to suggest that suicide rates do peak at particular periods of time. For example, during the incident of 09/11 or during periods of economic downturn. That being said, it appears equally reasonable to derive a plausible rationalisation that suicide is a result of the wider social system and its workings; external pressures. It may be, after all, that it is people's reactions towards the greater workings of society as a whole.

Even so, before Durkheim's analysis on suicide, this phenomenon is viewed from a biological standpoint. Explanations of suicide that derives from an individual's inherent biological conditions were valid reasonings. Suicide was a "disease". A form of "mental illness" to begin with. Anti-structural views such as this were not able to adequately explain the very existence of the intention to commit suicide in the first place. It seems a rather boiled down theory which dismisses the "triggering" factor. At the end of the day, genetic theorists would lay on the argument that certain individuals are genetically predisposed towards suicide, giving rise to a radical assumption of crude biological determinism. Does that mean then, that there is a "medical" cure to it? That we are innately predisposed to a "recognised form" of suicide? This is a controversial stand as it derives its ideas from a scientific point of view, yet positivism seems more inclined in explaining social events in structural terms.

To conclusively make the distinction that suicide is either an individual phenomenon or a result of external forces would be rather simplistic. While suicide may be more inclined towards a reaction to external stimuli, the fact that people do enjoy a certain extent of relative autonomy should not be negated. Suicide should not be looked upon totally as a voluntary act. Nor should it be considered a "natural" event.

Then what it is?