General Conclusions

The research undertaken in this book has suggested, in opposition to Durkheim and the sociological tradition apparently following him, that official suicide rates are a most inappropriate source of data for suicide research and that suicidal actions will not be satis­factorily explained without reference to the actor’s intentions and the micro-social context of his action. However, this view of socio­logical studies did not lead to an acceptance of what may be termed ‘individually orientated’ approaches, one variety of which locates the causes of suicide in factors physically ‘inside’ the individual as opposed to ‘outside’ in his environment, while another argues that suicide has to be ‘understood’ in terms of the meaning that the indi­vidual ‘constructs’ for his own action.

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