Adolescents who engage in substance abuse have a significantly increased rate of self-inflicted death, and there is a close relationship between substance misuse patterns and the number and severity of suicide attempts. In addition, youth identified because of their suicidal behavior frequently use and abuse drugs and alcohol.
It does not follow, however, that a cause and effect relationship exists between drug use and suicide. In fact, the recreational use of drugs is not to be confused with the abuse of drugs-suicide relationship. In fact, the issue of drug use as an individual problem may be less relevant to suicidal behavior than larger, external social forces impacting the individual.
An examination of the quantity of drug usage, methods of suicide attempt, reasons for suicide, and methods of counseling will be examined as they pertain to suicidal youth. The drug-suicide connection will be examined in light of views placing more emphasis on social, rather than psychological, forces.
Labelling and control theories, coupled with Durkheim's Suicide and Glassner & Loughlin's (1987) Drugs in Adolescent Worlds will guide the discussion. In addition, supplemental studies on suicide will be examined. In short, it will be shown that suicide, like drug taking, is a sociological behavior, not a psychological one. Both suicide and drug taking are responses to one's social world, not internal pathologies.
One useful way to explore youth suicide is by way of the clinical-epidemiologic interaction--that is, by examining internal vulnerability (e.g., biologic or characterologic disorders) in combination with external stresses (e.g., social forces such as economic and demographic variables). Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was the person most responsible for establishing the systematic study of the relationship between social forces and suicide. His major study, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897/1951), "has become a classi...