Suicide among Undergraduate Students in Southeast Nigeria: An Empirical Evaluation of Durkheim’s Classifications of Suicide

The Durkheimian sociological doctrine of suicide is classified into regulation/integration, high and low social currents, with four resultant suicide types such as egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic suicide. Across Nigeria and social classes, suicide types and circumstances according to the above classifications have become worrisome, warranting empirical investigation into the social wellbeing and suicide potentials in the social realm of Nigerian socio-economic and political landscape. As such, this study investigated the suicide tendency among undergraduate students in some selected institutions of higher learning in south-eastern Nigeria. The study adopted a survey design using a sample size of 2,200 students (17+). The study adopted parametric statistics for the test of the relationship of variables. In the overall findings, altruistic suicide tendency is high (60%), this is followed by anomic suicide tendency (47%), egoistic suicide tendency (46%) and fatalistic suicide tendency (41%). From the regression model (p< .05), altruistic suicide tendency was found to be predicted by family income and strong ties with family activities. Equally, anomic suicide tendency can be predicted by how many years the students have been in the school. Egoistic suicide tendency was found to be positively correlated with family income and source of sponsorship while fatalistic suicide tendency was found to be positively correlated with only family income.

Adolescent attitudes about altruistic suicide

A survey of 1,019 Polish high school students found that some forms of altruistic suicide were viewed favorably, whereas other forms were viewed very negatively. A relatively more negative view in general toward altruistic suicide was associated with being more religious, whereas a relatively more positive view was associated with personal involvement in suicidal behavior and having friends who had committed suicide.