there is a cohort effect which means that there is a likelihood of continuing increases within these groups in the years to come.
             Some researchers in Canada, whilst admitting that they are puzzled as to why rates are increasing for men and not for women and recognizing the need for further work, suggest that study of risk factors may be fruitful (Charlton et al. 1993). The argument is that as defined risk factors have increased so have suicidal mortality rates (Charlton et al. 1993). The general factors that are referred to are illness, personal factors, social factors, stressful life events and access to the means of committing suicide. The specific risk factors that are typically regarded as relevant for suicidal mortality include high divorce rates, high unemployment, exposure to armed combat, increasing risk of imprisonment, use of drugs and increases in the spread of the HIV virus (Charlton et al. 1993). In particular there is no mechanism which could explain how such general risk factors impact differentially to produce gender differences in American rates (Charlton et al. 1993).
             Durkheim sought to establish sociological explanations for suicide and not individualistic ones. It is not however true to say that he was uninterested either in psychology or in individual levels of explanation (Taylor 1982). But he wanted however to advance a sociological explanation of a particular kind (Taylor 1982 pp 47).
             Durkheim developed a sophisticated model in which four types of interrelated social causes were derived from his more general conception of the social and moral order (Taylor 1982). Societies, he suggests, constrain humans in two ways -by attaching to them socially given purposes and ideals (social integration) and by moderating their potentially infinite desires (social regulation). Egoism and altruism derive from the notion of integration; anomie and fatalism derive from social regulation (the moral order). Durk...