Relation of suicide rates to social conditions: Evidence from U.S. vital statistics.

A CTS OF suicide may be attributed to the jLjL person committing the act or to his en¬ vironment. Causes attributable to the person include, for example, the preexistence of mental illness or certain personality traits; causes at¬ tributable to the environment include the circumstances that precipitate the act. Concerning the environmental determinants of suicide, three questions may be asked. 1. Are there any environmental determinants of suicide or does all suicide, as some have argued, "arise from within" ? 2. If there are environmental determinants, what is their specific nature ? 3. What quantitative estimate can be made of the proportion of the suicide rate attributable to environmental determinants? The first question has been definitively an¬ swered by Durkheim and his successors. That suicide rates vary with social conditions not only indicates clearly that environment is influential but also leads to question 2 by suggesting that social conditions may be in this cause of death among the most relevant components of the environment. However, greater speci¬ ficity than the broad rubric "social conditions" is still lacking with respect to identification of causal environments. The answer to question 3 must await more specific answers to question 2.