title: Durkheim revisited: "Why do women kill themselves?".
abstract: Durkheim divided suicide into four social types; egoistic, anomic, fatalistic, and altruistic assigning the first two to modern, western society while relegating the last two to pre-industrial social orders. However, contemporary studies of female suicidal behavior and depression show that such women exhibit personality characteristics of low self-esteem, passivity, dependence and living vicariously for others which correspond to the behavioral indices of impersonalism, submissiveness, passivity, and obedience that produce the lack of individuation characteristic of Durkheim's altruistic/fatalistic suicide categories. On this basis, the author suggests that altruistic/fatalistic suicide may even in the modern world be relevant to the explanation of female suicidal behavior, a hypothesis which, if true, would support the contention that "men and women inhibit different social worlds."
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000533:Altruism; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D008875:Middle Aged; D010551:Personality; D012737:Sex Factors; D012924:Social Conditions; D012934:Social Isolation; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*