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Depression and suicidality are deeply intertwined (see Table 6.2). Suicidality is a diagnostic symptom for major depression (Table 6.1), and depression is the most common mental disorder leading to suicide, although substance abuse and schizophrenia are also major contributors (WHO 2017). A successful theory of depression must explain suicidality, and the bargaining model, building on the work of Giddens (1964), Brown (1986), and Watson and Andrews (2017), does. Suicide permanently removes oneself as a source of valuable benefits for the group. Suicide threats are therefore threats to impose substantial costs on group members and can be viewed as a means to signal cheaply and efficiently to a large social group that it may suffer such costs if assistance or change is not forthcoming. Suicide attempts are necessary to underwrite the credibility of suicide threats and must therefore entail a genuine risk of serious injury or death. Failed attempts resulting in injury can still impose costs on group members and indicate the seriousness of future attempts. Completed suicides are the cost of maintaining a credible threat. A suicidal signaling/bargaining strategy could evolve if it involved warning others beforehand (allowing them to respond to the suicidal person’s needs), if the rate of threats were much higher than the rate of attempts, and if the rates of attempts were much higher than the rate of completions. Under these circumstances, the average benefits received over many generations by genes coding for this strategy, when group members were successfully influenced, could exceed the average costs suffered by those genes when suicide attempts succeeded.8 In depression-related suicidality, individuals do commonly warn others of their intentions and frequently choose unreliable methods (Kreitman 1977; Stengel 1974). Major depression has been found to be by far the greatest risk factor for suicidal ideation, and the lifetime prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempts is several hundred times greater than the annual suicide rate (Table 6.3). Across numerous studies, five psychological constructs have consistently been associated with suicide: impulsivity/aggression, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and self-consciousness/social disengagement (Conner et al. 2017). Most of these are consistent with the bargaining model in obvious ways. Previous research suggests that both clinicians (Bancroft et al. 1979; Hawton et al. 1982) and families (James and Hawton 1985) tend to attribute manipulative motives to suicide attempters, consistent with the bargaining model. Although studies of adolescents’ stated reasons for suicide indicate that few mention a manipulative motive (e.g., in a study by Boergers et al. [1998], only 18% did so), numerous data from small, kin-based societies confirm that suicide threats are used by individuals for exactly the political purposes proposed here. Giddens’s 1964 article on the cross-cultural sociology of suicide is worth quoting at length (citations in text omitted): An example [of suicide as part of a wider social system of punishment and sanction in some societies] was given by Malinowski, in what has been recently described as “the best-known suicide in the ethnographic literature”.... This was the case of a youth who committed suicide after he had been publicly accused of incest. This action, says Malinowski, served to expiate his crime. The suicide, by means of his act, “declares that he has been badly treated”...; the probability that a wronged or humiliated individual would kill himself serves as “a permanent damper on any violence of language or behavior, or any deviation from custom or tradition, which might hurt or offend another”.... Suicide thus functions to facilitate social order; suicide, or the possibility of suicide, serves as a sanction in situations of controversy or dispute. A similar conclusion is reached by Berndt in a recent discussion of suicide.... Jefferys has collected together a number of examples of what he calls “revenge” suicide: in these examples, again, suicide functions as a form of social sanction against those towards whom the individual has a grievance.... Such suicide usually has ritualized elements in it — the suicide method, for example, is often standardized. Attempted suicide and verbal threats of suicide, can also be seen in some societies to be part of a recognized social pattern. In Tikopia, for example, according to Firth, the suicidal threat is recognized as an appropriate response in certain types of situations. Verbal suicide threats are used as a form of social pressure in the judicial process. The announcement of intention to commit suicide draws public attention to the individual who believes himself wronged, and provides an indictment of the wrongdoer.... A similar mechanism involving “a threat of suicide dramatically announced” operates, according to Honigman, among the Kashka Indians.... In Ovimbuandu, in central Angola, suicide threats are similarly used to put pressure on others in disputes; the suicidal threat is also recognized as an important form of social sanction among the Fulani.... Other examples are not hard to find. In all of these cases, suicide threats are part of a defined social pattern relating to the settlement of disputes. Attempted suicide, of course, often simply represents a suicide which fails through technical reasons. But this is by no means always the case. Malinowski, for example, notes that, in the Trobriands, there are two “serious” methods used in suicide — these virtually always produce death; there is also a “milder” method, from which the individual usually recovers. The “milder” method is usually the one used in matrimonial quarrels and other relatively minor disputes.... Among the Kuma of New Guinea, suicide attempts are “expected” of women when they are contractually married. The suicide attempt is always by drowning. The attempt only occasionally results in the death of the individual. The suicide attempt is an accepted method of protest against the relatives who have brought about the undesired match.... Fortune describes various cases of attempted suicide in Dobu. Conclusion Here attempted suicide is mainly associated with matrimonial disputes. The suicide attempt is typically made in the spouse’s village, and serves as a means of registering protest, in front of relatives, against the conduct of the spouse.... Gorer remarks upon similar instances among the Lepchas of the Southern Himalaya. An individual who believes himself wronged may attempt to commit suicide; this serves both to affirm his own innocence in the matter in question, and as a public indictment of the transgressor. The individual attempts suicide, but the attempt is made “in such situations that he is bound to be saved”.... In all of these examples, the suicidal act is a recognized type of social mechanism, an accepted method of bringing pressure to bear upon others. (Giddens 1964, pp. 115–116) Brown’s (1986) detailed analysis of suicide among the Jivaroan Aguaruna, a group of hunter-horticulturalists who live in the rugged uplands of the Amazon in northern Peru, similarly reveals that the social etiology of suicides among this group is precisely that predicted by the bargaining model — suicide is used by individuals to impose costs on group members with whom they have a conflict: Some segments of Aguaruna society — specifically, women and young men who are unable to organise collective responses to conflict — use solitary acts of violence directed against the self to express anger and grief, as well as to punish social antagonists. (Brown [1986], p. 311; emphasis added).() 网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文作品权归所有；未经官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯作品权现象，英语论文，英语论文，保留一切法学追诉权。() 更多范文欢迎访问我们主页 当然有需求可以和我们 联系交流。-X() |
