Assess the usefulness of interpretive approaches to the study of suicide.

... Assess the usefulness of interpretive approaches to the study of suicide. Until the 1960s, suicide was relatively understudied by sociologists. This was largely because Emile Durkheim's "Le Suicide" (1897) study had dominated this area of sociology and it was believed, by many at least, that there was little more to study and find out about suicide. More recently, however, there have been interpretive approaches to the study of suicide. Interpretive approaches seek to explore the way in which society is constructed through people's interactions, and therefore, interpretive approaches to suicide have challenged and produced some greatly different explanations to Durkheim's positivistic approach. Despite interpretive approaches to suicide providing a new and, in the eyes of some, more valid and thorough explanation of suicide to Durkheim's, arguably, they are also flawed. Jacobs' (1967) analysis of suicide notes provides one example of an interpretive approach to the study of suicide. Jacobs studied

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