Suicide: A 15‐Year Review of the Sociological Literature Part II: Modernization and Social Integration Perspectives

Abstract

This article reviews the findings of 84 sociological studies published over a 15‐year period. These studies deal with tests of the modernization and/or social integration perspectives on suicide. Research on modernization, religious integration, and political integration often questioned or reformulated the traditional Durkheimian perspective. A major new theoretical development, Pescosolido's religious networks perspective, gained some empirical support in the 15‐year period. The strongest support for social integration theory came from research on marital integration, wherein more than three quarters of the research found a significant relationship. Finally, further research on migration, a force lowering social integration, continued to tend to find a positive link to suicide.