Citation

Jakovljević M, Vukusić H, Komar Z, Sedić B, Martinac M. Psychiatr. Danub. 2006; 18(Suppl 1): 60.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, Clinical Hospital Center Zagreb, Kispatićeva 12, 10 000 Zagreb. (miro.jakovljevic@mef.hr)

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Facultas Universitatis Studiorum Zagrabiensis - Danube Symposion of Psychiatry)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

16963952

Abstract

It is widely recognized that social dynamics may have powerful effects on suicide rates. In the light of recent social changes in Croatia, Durkheim's work re-emerges with great relevance. Durkheim postulated that social disintegration, alienation and anomie may influence suicide rates and that the frequency of suicides in a society depends on two basic issues: the degree of egoism/altruism and anomie or fatalism. According to Durkeim's classic treatise, anomic suicide is related to large scale of societal crisis of an political or economic nature which deregulate values, beliefs, and general norms and fail to fulfil individual aspirations. Anomic suicide as a function of social and political dynamics is of a particular interest in some specific and sensitive subpopulations like war veterans. Studies of suicides among Croatian war veterans with and without PTSD may highlight some aspects of anomic suicide as well as the interaction of actual socio-political factors with the stressful elements of the combat experience. Our research revealed that national elections exert a short-term impact on suicide incidence among Croatian war veterans. Election years 1995, 1999 and 2003 were associated with evident short-term increase in suicide incidence among the war veterans. The reasons for this increase are unknown. Possible explanations include the influence of variety factors like the phenomenon of political manipulations and secondary victimization, negative mass media influence, the mounting sense of disappointment, unfavourable self-perception, self-esteem and self-worth, the loose of the very values that justified their participation in the war as well as the touch with higher aspirational goals of the group, pessimistic view on the future, etc. Suicide-epidemiological research on short-term influence of elections on national suicide incidence is scarce and has yielded contradictory results. The concept of "general pathogenic social stress" as well as that of "general adaptation problems" may be helpful in understanding the suicide rates variations among Croatian war veterans. Although we are aware of the fact that suicide results from a complex interaction of biological, psychological, socio-cultural, and situational factors as well as limitations of this study, our results support the existence of some relationship between "suicidogenic" social circumstances and the suicide rates.

Language: en