Mental illness and suicide

• Douglas

  Argues to understand suicide we must discover it's meanings for the deceased

  • rejects use of official suicide stats (social construct only telling us about the labels applied by the coroners)
  • to discover the deceased meanings we must use qualitative methods e.g. analysis of suicide notes
• Atkinson: coroners common sense knowledge

  Focuses on how coroners use taken for granted assumptions to construct social reality:

  • certain aspects of death (circumstances of the death, life histories) are considered typical of suicides > labels certain deaths as suicide > swells official stats > reinforces coroners original assumption creating SFP
• Paranoia and self-fulfilling prophecy

  Interactionists = interested on how a person is labelled mentally ill and the effects of this label

  • Lemert = socially awkward individuals maybe labelled and excluded from groups
  • Individuals negative response gives group a reason to fear for their mental health > medical label of paranoia
  • Label ‘master patient’ becomes their master status
• Institutionalism

  • Goffman shows possible effects of being admitted to ‘total institution’ like psychiatric hospial
  • Patients undergo ‘mortification of the self’ > old identity ‘killed off’ and replaced with new; ‘inmate’ > achieved by ‘degradation rituals’ e.g. confiscation of personal effects
• Evaluation

  Goffman shows the process is not deterministic, some patients manage to resist being institutionalism