Citation

Harris AH, Humphreys K, Finney JW. Am. J. Public Health 2015; 105(4): e8.

Affiliation

Alex H. S. Harris, Keith Humphreys, and John W. Finney are with the Center for Innovation to Implementation, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA. Keith Humphreys is also with Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2015.302604

PMID

25713959

Abstract

Anderson et al.'s finding that states with legalized medical marijuana had lower suicide rates among young men calls to mind the work of the famous French sociologist, Emile Durkheim. In Le Suicide, published in 1897, Durkheim observed that suicide rates were lower in regions with a higher proportion of Catholics and concluded that social controls within the Catholic religion reduced the likelihood of Catholics taking their own lives. Durkheim's individual-level interpretation of his region-level data subsequently became a textbook example of the "ecological fallacy": the assumption that associations observed at a higher level of aggregation (e.g., state level) are mirrored at the individual level. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print February 25, 2015: e1. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302604).

Language: en