The Effect of Religiosity on Suicide in Sweden: A Time Series Analysis

Stack, Steven

doi:10.2307/1387280

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…This finding provides direct support for the notion that commitment to religion assuages problems with living. The vast majority of previous research has used indirect measures of commitment to religious doctrines (e.g., Cutright and Fernquist 2008; Cutright, Stack, and Fernquist 2007; Fernquist 2007; Fernquist and Cutright 1998; Stack 1983, 1991).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, the sociological research on the religious commitment perspective has also been based on highly aggregated data. Most of the 14 such investigations have found that level‐2 measures of religious commitment are inversely associated with state and national suicide rates (e.g., Cutright and Fernquist 2008; Fernquist 2007; Fernquist and Cutright 1998; Cutright, Stack, and Fernquist 2007; Stack 1983, 1991). The hypothesis to be tested is:…”

Section: An Integrated Modelof Suicide Acceptabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Religion and Suicide Acceptability: A Cross-National Analysis

Stack¹,

Kposowa

2011

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Self Cite

163

125

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Four perspectives (moral community thesis, religious integration, religious commitment, and social networks) guide the selection of variables in this study. Data are from the combined World Values/European Values Surveys for 2000 (50,547 individuals nested in 56 nations). The results of a multivariate hierarchical linear model support all four perspectives. Persons residing in nations with relatively high levels of religiosity, who are affiliated with one of four major faiths, are religiously committed, and are engaged with a religious network are found to be lower in suicide acceptability. The religious integration perspective, in particular, is empirically supported; affiliation with Islam is associated with low suicide acceptability. The findings provide strong support for an integrated model and demonstrate the usefulness of the moral community thesis in understanding suicide acceptability.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Integrated Modelof Suicide Acceptabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion and Suicide Acceptability: A Cross-National Analysis

Stack¹,

Kposowa

2011

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Self Cite

163

125

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“…As for suicide, however, regular church‐attending Americans clearly have lower rates than non‐attenders (Comstock and Partridge 1972; Stack and Wasserman 1992; Martin 1984), although this correlation has actually not been found in other nations (Stack 1991). Of the current top‐ten nations with the highest rates of suicide, most are relatively secular (World Health Organization, 2003).…”

Section: Life Satisfaction and Psychological Well‐beingmentioning

confidence: 93%

Atheism, Secularity, and Well‐Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions

Zuckerman¹

2009

Sociology Compass

190

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What do we currently know about atheists and secular people? In what ways are atheism and secularity correlated with positive societal outcomes? This article offers a thorough presentation and discussion of the latest social scientific research concerning the identities, values, and behaviors of people who don't believe in God or are non-religious, and addresses the ways in which atheism and secularity are positively correlated with societal well-being.

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“…As early as 1952, Portefield (cited in Stark and Bainbridge ) published a (largely ignored) paper reporting that church membership rates in the United States were negatively correlated with suicide rates. Other empirical analyses, like those by Stack (, ), have used religious book production as a percentage of all book publication to proxy religious integration‐regulation. Such studies, however, disregard the option of exploring the intensity of the attachment and level of religious integration so emphasized by Durkheim ([]1970:202).…”

Section: The Importance Of Analyzing Switzerland and Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Suicide and Religion: New Evidence on the Differences Between Protestantism and Catholicism

Torgler¹,

Schaltegger²

2014

Scientific Study of Religion

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"A faithful Catholic's supreme wish is to depart from this world fortified by the holy sacraments. As suicide would of necessity deprive him of this means of arriving at a blissful eternity, only a non-believing or strayed Catholic could kill himself voluntarily" Halbwachs (1978:187). INTRODUCTIONActs of suicide are not only as ancient as humanity itself but feature prominently in many important pieces of literature, particularly those by Shakespeare. For example, 200 years ago, Goethe's widely read Sorrows of the Young Werther was banned in Italy, Leipzig, Copenhagen, and other European regions out of fear that the hero's suicide would encourage others to imitate his manner of death (Phillips 1974). Immanuel Kant, one of the first to observe the persistence of suicide, saw it as a certain organic character within society (Stark and Bainbridge 1996).Since the middle of the 19th century, research on suicide has advanced substantially, enriched by the pioneering works of Guerry, Etoc-Demazy, Lisle, and Masaryk, and in particular Wagner, Morselli, and Durkheim (for a discussion, see Halbwachs [1930Halbwachs [ ] 1978Stark and Bainbridge 1996). The fact that religion presumes to offer answers about the ultimate meaning of life makes its relevance for understanding suicide readily apparent.We employ an empirical analysis to evaluate the contemporary effect of religion on suicide and suicide acceptability in society. We offer a new perspective on "sociology's own law," which is the proposition that Catholics have a lower suicide rate than Protestants. The first case we analyze is that of Switzerland. The country has been a key area of investigation since the beginning of the empirically-oriented suicide literature because of its cantonal variation in the share of Protestants and Catholics. However, former studies have been purely descriptive. Halbwachs ([1930] (2014) 53(2) factors, including urban or rural lifestyle, the level of industrialization, and the size of the agricultural sector. Switzerland is unique in that it offers the opportunity to control for a large set of factors at the cantonal level, which allows better isolation of the potential influence of religion while also controlling for cultural and institutional differences. Thus, using a recent 21-year panel of subfederal (cantonal) data from Switzerland, we test (controlling for a large set of factors) whether or not the impact of religion on suicides holds in today's secularized society.However, since religious denomination could capture a variety of unobserved and inherited determinants of culture and history (each of which may influence suicide rates) we additionally exploit data from the European Values Study (EVS) to check the robustness of our results with respect to suicide acceptability. If, when controlling for a larger set of factors, there remains a significant difference of accepting suicide between Protestants and Catholics, then we have additional support for the proposition that religion is not a veil hiding some important underlying fac...

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The Effect of Religiosity on Suicide in Sweden: A Time Series Analysis

Cited by 15 publications

References 20 publications

Religion and Suicide Acceptability: A Cross-National Analysis

Religion and Suicide Acceptability: A Cross-National Analysis

Atheism, Secularity, and Well‐Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions

Suicide and Religion: New Evidence on the Differences Between Protestantism and Catholicism

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