{"id":2708,"date":"2006-09-15T07:04:53","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T14:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/09\/15\/new-orleans-suicide-rate-upneeds-better-sample-but-if-true-its-called-anomie\/"},"modified":"2006-09-15T07:04:53","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T14:04:53","slug":"new-orleans-suicide-rate-upneeds-better-sample-but-if-true-its-called-anomie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2708","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans Suicide Rate Up…Needs Better Sample, but if True It's Called Anomie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a mini-sociology lesson. I found this article<\/a> today, which includes the following quote:<\/p>\n

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Dr. Raoult Ratard took a unique approach to studying the suicide rate because there have been no reliable estimates of how many people have returned since the storm. Various sources have put the number at anywhere from fewer than 200,000 to around 250,000 out of a pre-Katrina population of just under 455,000.<\/p>\n

So, Ratard looked at the number of deaths from October 2005 (when the city was reopened after the storm) through March 2006, and compared that total to the number of deaths of all kinds during the same period the year before.<\/p>\n

The pre-storm death total was 2,507; post-storm, 1,024. That means the number of deaths was down by about three-fifths.<\/p>\n

Then Ratard looked at suicides. The number of pre-storm suicides was 16; post-storm, 11. That means the number of suicides was down by only about one-third.<\/p>\n

So, the suicide rate appears to have gone up. But the totals are too small to conclude that Katrina caused the increase, Ratard said. “They are not big enough so that you can say with certainty that it would not be due to chance,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are a few important sociological issues that this brought up for me. First, I think, while innovative, the methodology is fairly weak. One of the problems is that we may also need to count Katrina evacuees in this as well. Of course, this is going to be damn near impossible to do, since the Katrina Diaspora is so dispersed across the US. Now we could argue that only people in the city limits over the entire year should be counted, but I think if a researcher wanted look at suicides that could be directly or indirectly related to Katrina, he or she needs to think well outside the city boundaries. The other methodological weakness is the small numbers. I think it is irresponsible to report findings that are not statistically significant as if they are. I certainly don’t blame the authors of the study for this, but I do worry that people are going to get the wrong impression of strength o the findings. The other issue that I’d like to bring up, is the distinction between correlation and causation. This data only shows a correlation between suicide and Katrina, and one that may not even be significant. One funny example commonly used in sociology to demonstrate the distinction between causation and correlation is the strong correlation between the amount of ice cream sold in stores and the murder rate. In the US the murder rate goes up when people buy more ice cream, and when they buy less ice cream the murder rate goes down. Now anybody with a lick of sense knows that ice cream doesn’t drive people into murderous rages. There is a correlation, but we know ice cream doesn’t cause murder or for that matter higher murder rates don’t cause people to eat more ice cream. So why is this? Well, the murder rates (especially in temperate climates) tend to be higher in the summer, and the warmer weather is also correlated with people eating more ice cream. In the study above, they probably could do case studies of the suicides and try to determine if Katrina played a role. The researcher does note this problem, but I worry that the average reader may not realize why this important.<\/p>\n

On another note, I do think there is a reasonable argument to be made as to why the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina could be related to an increase in suicides. This argument goes way back to one of the founder’s of sociology: Emile Durkheim<\/a>. Durkheim is best know for his study on suicide<\/a>. Durkheim identified various types of suicide, including anomie\/anomic suicide. This type of suicide is related to conditions where social norms break down. The Durkheim website cited above describes the various types of anomic suicide as follows:<\/p>\n