Evaluate Durkheim’s theory of suicide.

Unlike most others before him who believed that influences such as inherited mental disorder are of paramount importance in causing suicide, Emile Durkheim chose to look instead at suicide purely as a social fact, rather that the act of an individual. Through analysis of government figures on suicide rates, Durkheim tried to measure and explain suicide as a social phenomenon. In his book, “Suicide: a study in sociology”, Durkheim was critical of both physical an psychological explanations of suicide as he claimed that neither accounted for the stability of suicide rates over…(short extract)