The paper explores the connection between short-range social ties (i.e. links
with close relatives) and the occurrence of suicide. The objective is to
discriminate between a model based on social ties and a model based on
psychological traumas. Our methodological strategy is to focus on instances
characterized by the severance of some social ties. We consider several
situations of this kind. (i) Prisoners in the first days after their
incarceration. (ii) Prisoners in solitary confinement. (iii) Prisoners who are
transferred from one prison to another. (iv) Prisoners in closed versus open
prisons. (v) Prisoners in the weeks following their release. (vi) Immigrants in
the years following their relocation. (vii) Unmarried versus married people.
Furthermore, in order to test the impact of major shocks we consider the
responses in terms of suicides to the following shocks. (i) The attack of
September 11, 2001 in Manhattan. (ii) The Korean War. (iii) The two world wars.
(iv) The Great Depression in the United States. (v) The hyperinflation episode
of 1923 in Germany. Major global traumatic shocks such as 9/11 or wars have no
influence on suicide rates once changing environment conditions have been
controlled for.
Overall, it turns out that the observations have a natural interpretation in
terms of short-range ties. In contrast, the trauma model seems unable to
adequately account for many observations.Comment: 19 pages, 7 graphics, 4 table