Citation

Luauté JP. Ann. Med. Psychol. (Paris) 2016; 174(6): 485-490.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Societe Medico-Psychologique, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.amp.2016.04.002

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Late Nineteenth-Century Paris saw a spate of suicides, including a series of family suicides, i.e. suicides of parents and children, which have been attributed to poverty. "Poverty" in this context can refer to utter destitution, a reversal of fortune, or, in some cases, a more complex set of economic factors. In 1836, the authorities had introduced "poverty/reversal of fortune" as one of the categories of motives used to classify individual cases of suicide. In spite of the fact that poverty was indeed widespread in Paris, reducing suicide to poverty makes for crude sociologizing and ignores constants such as individual psychopathology and the occurrence of a depressed mood at the time of suicidal acts. © 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS.

Language: fr

Keywords

human; Epidemiology; Poverty; Depression; suicide; poverty; family; France; Sociology; parent; mental disease; history; economic aspect; Altruistic suicide; Article; Clinical study; Collective suicide; Émile Durkheim; Nineteenth-Century