Suicides in France, 1910-43

Lunden, Walter A.

doi:10.1086/220018

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The data show that suicide rates in France dropped during both wars [3], as was the case in Great Britain [4], and the United States [5]. The average drop in suicide rates for all nations involved in the First World War was 15.3% for the years 1915–1918, and in the Second World War, 13.5% for the years 1940–1945 (based on [6]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wars and Suicides in Israel, 1948–2006

Oron

2012

IJERPH

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This paper reports the characteristics of suicides which occurred during the existential and the non-existential wars in Israel. It provides a first approximation of whether the suicide patterns in each war are consistent with the findings of Morselli and Durkheim, and whether their theoretical interpretations can serve as a preliminary guideline to explaining the Israeli case, which is characterized by short periods of war, social integration during some of the non-existential wars, and a sharp rise in post-war male suicide rates following all of the existential wars. Implications for further studies on the subject in Israel and elsewhere are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wars and Suicides in Israel, 1948–2006

Oron

2012

IJERPH

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“…He cites an account of the December 1939 meeting of the Société medico-psychologique where mental distress amongst civilians was reported as already widespread as early as the Phoney War and where Dr François Achille-Delmas observed that if the number of those committed to asylums ‘might not increase during war … the number of cases of mania and melancholy certainly did’ (Thomas, 2009: 178–9). It is, says Thomas, a finding which is in direct contradiction with Walter A. Lunden’s 1947 journal article ‘Suicides in France 1910–43’ which, for years, was the only scholarly study of mental health during the period. With no apparent evidence (and an over-reliance on Émile Durkheim’s study Le Suicide in 1898) Lunden had argued that in wartime civilians engaged with the challenges facing them with renewed purpose and vigour and, because of this, their mental health actually improved rather than deteriorated (1947: 321–34).…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…It is, says Thomas, a finding which is in direct contradiction with Walter A. Lunden’s 1947 journal article ‘Suicides in France 1910–43’ which, for years, was the only scholarly study of mental health during the period. With no apparent evidence (and an over-reliance on Émile Durkheim’s study Le Suicide in 1898) Lunden had argued that in wartime civilians engaged with the challenges facing them with renewed purpose and vigour and, because of this, their mental health actually improved rather than deteriorated (1947: 321–34). Thomas (2009) and J. L. T. Birley, the latter writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2002, both point out that low asylum admissions during the Occupation did not accurately reflect the incidence of poor mental health, given that large numbers of the mentally ill were cared for at home by relatives for reasons of affordability and because of well-founded fears about the quality of asylum care.…”

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confidence: 95%

Mental distress under Occupation: The journal of Madeleine Blaess

Michallat

2017

French Cultural Studies

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Madeleine Blaess a British doctoral student studying at the Sorbonne was trapped in Paris unable to return home to York for the duration of the Occupation. In October 1940 she began a diary which she kept diligently until September 1944. This unique testimony written from the perspective of a British student at liberty to roam wartime Paris, focuses more on the civilian struggle through the everyday than on the political and military situation which Blaess, vulnerable to arrest, thinks wise to mention as little as possible. This exhaustively documented, voluminous record of the minutiae of a daily struggle with material hardship discloses a struggle with mental illness articulated and managed through the writing of the diary. That diaries can have a therapeutic purpose for writers under mental strain is axiomatic and this article examines a variety of palliative strategies both deliberate and involuntary invoked through the writing process. In so doing, the article will survey the incidence and causes of civilian mental distress on the home front over the period; an area of inquiry which, other than recent work into the psychological impact of Allied bombing of civilians, has been largely neglected in recent work foregrounding and valorising the historical importance of life-writing sources in the field of Occupation studies.

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“…5 Several European studies that investigated how the first and second world wars affected suicide rates across France, Great Britain, and Scotland were in support of Durkheim's assertion. 6–8 Over 200 000 Irish men fought in the First World War, of whom 50 000 are believed to have died; this is equivalent to an annual death rate of 225 per 100 000 of the population. 9,10 The effect of the First World War on the Irish suicide rate has received limited attention from sociological and psychological researchers.…”

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confidence: 99%

Effect of the First World War on suicide rates in Ireland: an investigation of the 1864–1921 suicide trends

Osman¹,

Parnell

2015

BJPsych open

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SummarySince the proposition of the social integration theory by Émile Durkheim, macro-sociological changes have been speculated to affect suicide rates. This study investigates the effect of the First World War on Irish suicide rates. We applied an interrupted time series design of 1864–1921 annual Irish suicide rates. The 1864–1913 suicide rates exhibited a slow-rising trend with a sharp decline from the year 1914 onwards. The odds for death by suicide for males during the 1914–1918 period was 0.811 (95% CI 0.768–0.963). Irish rates of suicide were significantly reduced during the First World War, most notably for males.Declaration of interestNone.Copyright and usage© 2015 The Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

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Suicides in France, 1910-43

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Wars and Suicides in Israel, 1948–2006

Wars and Suicides in Israel, 1948–2006

Mental distress under Occupation: The journal of Madeleine Blaess

Effect of the First World War on suicide rates in Ireland: an investigation of the 1864–1921 suicide trends

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