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2020 - Volume 4 - Number 2

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

Samuel O. Okafor * samuelokey200@gmail.com * ORCID: 0000-0001-8584-5616
University of Nigeria, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Nsukka, NIGERIA

Open Journal for Anthropological Studies, 2020, 4(2), 35-50 * https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojas.0402.01035o
Received: 14 August 2020 ▪ Accepted: 27 October 2020 ▪ Published Online: 29 November 2020

LICENCE: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ARTICLE (Full Text - PDF)

ABSTRACT:
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.

KEY WORDS: suicide tendency, anomic suicide, egoistic suicide, fatalistic suicide, altruistic suicide, Durkheimian suicide doctrine.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Samuel O. Okafor, University of Nigeria, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Nsukka, NIGERIA. E-mail: samuelokey200@gmail.com.

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