Four Types Of Suicide Analysis

Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, proposed that social forces influence suicide rates. Social forces such as social integration and social regulation affect the likelihood of suicidal tendencies in an individual. Social integration is how well one is integrated into a social group or community. Social regulation is the number of rules guiding one’s daily life, more specifically, what one can reasonably expect from the world on a day-to-day basis. According to Durkheim, there are four types of suicide that occur: egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic suicide. Egoistic suicide occurs when one is not well integrated into a social group. When someone is no longer part of a long-term project, they feel insignificant since others give meaning …show more content…
The true reason as to why Mayer decided to take her own life remains unknown, but her loved ones speculate that it may have to do with her leaving the Belz community, a devoutly religious Hasidic sect. For twenty plus years, Mayer was part of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. In this circle, gender roles are a huge challenge for women, especially since “girls are raised to become mothers and wives, while boys are brought up to be scholars.” (Katz) Girls were getting an education that taught them how to sustain a household and that their views and choices were inferior to those of men. Growing up in this type of environment, Mayer felt frustrated and lonely. She wasn’t able to share her love for pop culture with anyone in her community and she definitely wasn’t able to express her indifference for religious …show more content…
For nearly all her life, Mayer identified herself as part of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish circle. The values that have been instilled in her was a part of who she was growing up. In other words, the Belz community dominated Mayer in the twenty five years she has been in the group. During her final years, when Mayer was no longer a part of the community, she achieved a master’s degree in accounting and started her own company. But there probably was a part of her that felt emptiness without the people she grew up with. No matter how Mayer tried to fill that hollowness, she was unsuccessful and that could have been what propelled her to kill herself. In most cases, altruistic suicide is a personal choice like it was in the case with Mayer. The pressure to commit suicide did not come from the community she was once part of nor did it come from her parents. Mayer could not live with the desolation that leaving the Belz community and her family caused