A1 - Part B: Group Presentation Details
A1 - Part B: Group Presentation Details
Assessment: PART B - Group Presentation to Critically Theorize a Contemporary Social or Practice Issue
This assessment task will require you to work with members of your tutorial cohort in order to contribute to your group's capacity to demonstrate the application of one or two theorists/theories to a social work practice issue or contemporary social issue requiring a policy response. This piece of assessment is designed to scaffold your learning for the essay assessment by providing a foundation for critical analysis, the use of theory, and the creative development of practice or policy responses to a social issue.
Topic: Youth Suicide
Chosen theory: Durkheim Theory
Within your theory groups you will be guided by the following questions:
What is your social issue and how is it predominantly perceived in the media?
What is an appropriate theory for critically analysing this issue?
What are the theory/ theorists main tenets?What are its/ their main values, assumptions?
What does the theory prioritize (e.g. class inequality, power inequality, oppression of a particular identity, gender asymmetries, exclusion, failure of cohesion)?
How does the theory inform the way we would explain the social issue you have selected in a more critical manner than we might otherwise see it? Another way of putting this is -- what is your argument concerning the issue in light of the theory?*
What are the gaps/limitations in using this theory?
What sort of practice or policy ideas does the use of this theory suggest?
*There should be a guiding thread or 'thesis' stated clearly near the beginning, saying what the theory helps explain about the issue.
You will need to supply at least 8 scholarly references.
The group work MUST read and write accordingly.
Presentation Details
Social issue: youth suicide and mental health
Chosen theory: Durkheimhttps://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/reader.action?docID=4690008&ppg=48
Chapter 3, starting page 42 ^ unit readingOther notes:
12-15 minutes (roughly 1500- 1900 words total) roughly 400 words per person (a little more is okay!)
12-15 scholarly references
Maximum 12 slides (excluding title slide and reference slides)
This assessment task will require you to work with members of your tutorial cohort in order to contribute to your group's capacity to demonstrate the application of one or two theorists/theories to a social work practice issue or contemporary social issue requiring a policy response. This piece of assessment is designed to scaffold your learning for the essay assessment by providing a foundation for critical analysis, the use of theory, and the creative development of practice or policy responses to a social issue.
Within your theory groups you will be guided by the following questions:
About social issue and media:
What is your social issue and how is it predominantly perceived in the media?
Suicide is a tragic contemporary issue that many Australians are experiencing. It is defined as a purposeful, self-inflicted act that results in fatal injuries and with the obvious intent to end one's own life (Oxford, 2024). An estimated 3,000 Australians lose their battle with suicide each year, underscoring the severe impacts it has on people, families, and communities (AIHW, 2024). According to Australian Institute of Health and welfare around nine individuals commit suicide each day(AIHW, 2024).Young children and teenagers are particularly subject to the realm of this alarming statistic. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that in 2022 alone, 304 young Australians tragically lost their lives to suicide. Youth suicide is caused by a variety of factors, such as mental disorders, pressures related to the social, economic, and environmental (Beautrais, 2000). Depression, anxiety, bipolar illness, and substance abuse considerably increase the risk of suicide among young people (Beautrais, 2000). When left untreated or undiagnosed, these conditions can breed feelings of hopelessness and despair, amplifying suicidal ideation (Kehoe, Whitehead, De Boer, Myer & Hopkins, 2024). Additionally, social and environmental stressors such as bullying, peer pressure, academic demands, family conflicts, trauma, abuse, and loss can intensify mental health struggles and prompt suicidal behaviours in youth (Beautrais, 2000). There are barriers to seeking help for young people, despite the abundance of suicide prevention programs and resources (Gilchrist & Sullivan, 2006). Young individuals seeking treatment encounter a number of challenges due to sociocultural influences, including shame, fear, stigma, and the influence of self-esteem (Gilchrist & Sullivan, 2006). These pressures frequently foster feelings of inferiority and loneliness, which make it extremely difficult for young people to adequately manage their emotional pain.
The media uses a variety of strategies to shape public perceptions of societal concerns. The "epidemic" of teenage depression dominates headlines, portraying a generation lost to social pressures. The media tends to romanticize suicide, which often leads to the Werther effect, a media-induced imitation effect on suicide, with alarming increases in rates (Niederkrotenthaler, Herberth & Sonneck, 2007). The origin of the Werther effect alludes to Goethes novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, where the protagonist takes his own life, shortly followed by a wave of suicides (Posselt, McIntyre & Procter, 2020). The Werther effect has repeated itself in recent years, through the famous Netflix series 13 Reasons Why which graphically illustrates the suicide of a teenage protagonist (Posselt, McIntyre & Procter, 2020). Following this show, Google's frequent search phrases reached 1.5 million, with phrases such as How to commit suicide (Niederkrotenthaler, Herberth & Sonneck, 2007). This sensationalized portrayal of youth suicide in the media not only oversimplifies a complex issue but also perpetuates harmful stereotypes and undermine efforts to address the root causes of mental health struggles among young people. The media also has a protective effect on suicide prevention, focusing on minimizing existing rates of suicide through the use of clear, understandable terminology, highlighting the preventable nature of suicide, providing helplines, and raising general awareness around suicide (Sorzano, 2023). Emile Durkheim's theoretical framework will be employed to analyze the magnitude of this crisis and formulate comprehensive strategies to tackle its underlying causes of youth sucide.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2022). Suicide & self-harm monitoring data. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/suicide-self-harm-monitoring-data
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2023, October 20). Suicide among young people. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/populations-age-groups/suicide-among-young-people
Beautrais, A. L. (2000). Risk Factors for Suicide and Attempted Suicide among Young People. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 34(3), 420436. https://doi.org/10.1080/j.1440-1614.2000.00691.x
Fullagar, S., Gilchrist, H., & Sullivan, G. (2007). The construction of youth suicide as a community issue within urban and regional Australia. Australian E-Journal for the Advancement of Mental Health, 6(2), 107118. https://doi.org/10.5172/jamh.6.2.107
Gilchrist, H., & Sullivan, G. (2006). Barriers to Help-seeking in Young People: Community Beliefs About Youth Suicide. Australian Social Work, 59(1), 7385. https://doi.org/10.1080/03124070500449796
Niederkrotenthaler, T., Herberth, A., & Sonneck, G. (2007). [The Werther-effect: legend or reality?]. Neuropsychiatrie: Klinik, Diagnostik, Therapie Und Rehabilitation: Organ Der Gesellschaft Osterreichischer Nervenarzte Und Psychiater, 21(4), 284290. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18082110/#:~:text=In%20social%20sciences%20and%20in
suicide noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced American Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com. (2024). Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/american_english/suicide#:~:text=1%5Buncountable%2C%20countable%5D%20theIntroduction to theory (Maddy):
What is an appropriate theory for critically analysing this issue?
What are the theory/ theorists main tenets? What are its/ their main values, assumptions?
What does the theory prioritize (e.g. class inequality, power inequality, oppression of a particular identity, gender asymmetries, exclusion, failure of cohesion)?
Durkheim theory will be utilised to support the critical analysis incidents of youth suicide. Durkheim theory was created by mile Durkheim, a French sociologist with social liberal values in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Carls, 2022; Seidman, 2016). Within Durkheims work, he attested that it was crucial to study the problems of life through scientific methodology to accurately record and measure the universal truths of society (Seidman, 2016).
Through Durkheim's lens, it is believed that individualism is a societal product, where we as individuals are not influenced by a physical environment but rather, we are shaped by the social environment, known as social facts (Nickerson, 2024; Schmaus, 1995). These social facts are perceived to be outside of the individuals control and consist of social norms, customs, laws, and values when all considered lead to the establishment of a collective consciousness (Seidman, 2016). This collective consciousness in turn influencing an individuals behavior and evolving the world around them (Seidman, 2016). Whilst considering this, it is believed that an individuals behavior is predetermined based on their respective environment (Schmaus, 1995). However, it is recognised that these social facts are dependent on the time and place and therefore provide conditions causing variants, all things considered for the purpose of this presentation we are primarily focusing on a current, western perspective (Follert, 2019).
Durkheims work provides that there is an emphasis on the importance of social solidarity and social cohesion within the construct of society (Carls, 2022). This being observed through social facts and social bonds providing influence as to how individuals act and behave (Nickerson, 2024). Durkheim focuses on how underlying external social forces such as changing social facts, can cause the weakening of social bonds impacting society resulting in a failure of societal cohesion (Fonseca et al., 2018). This failure of cohesion within society can negatively impact individuals resulting in a sense of lack of belonging and a sense of disconnection from society, leading to phenomena such as anomie and social disorganisation (Nickerson, 2024). Failure of social cohesion is seen through too much or too little social solidarity creating an increased risk factor of incidents of suicide thus guiding us as to how Durkheim theory relates to our social issue of youth suicide (Fonseca et al., 2018; Seidman, 2016).
Carls, P. (2022). mile Durkheim. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/emile-durkheim/
Follert, M. (2019). Contractual thought and Durkheims theory of the social: A reappraisal. Journal of Classical Sociology, 20(3), 167-190. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795x19826840
Fonseca, X., Lukosch, S., & Brazier, F. (2018). Social cohesion revisited: a new definition and how to characterize it. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 32(2), 123. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2018.1497480
Nickerson, C. (2024). Emile Durkheims Theory. Simply Psychology.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/emile-durkheims-theories.html
Schmaus, W. (1995). Explanation and Essence in The Rules of Sociological Method and The Division of Labor in Society. Sociological Perspectives, 38(1), 5775. https://doi.org/10.2307/1389262
Seidman, S. (2016). Contested knowledge: Social theory today (6th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Relating theory to social issue: (400)
How does the theory inform the way we would explain the social issue you have selected in a more critical manner than we might otherwise see it? Another way of putting this is -- what is your argument concerning the issue in light of the theory?*
What are the gaps/limitations in using this theory?
Drawing assumption that we are practicing in an western neoliberal society, it may be different if practiced elsewhere (from Tom in tutorial)
Australian society is constructed from Western neoliberal ideologies which is inherited in its political, economical and especially social views. Using Durkheim theory, we can analyse that these social views create social forces, external to the individual are the leading causes of young Australians committing suicide every year. These social forces, driven from a neoliberal social fact, constructs the social categories for young Australians to belong to for a sense of solidarity. Through the Durkheim lens, social facts such as class structure, religious beliefs, roles, sexuality and race represent a social cohesion. These social facts together have the coercive power to hold a society together known as the collective consciousness. Analysing through Durkheim theory, the collective consciousness that holds the coercive power within Australian society is drawn from white western neoliberal beliefs, morals and ideas which have become social facts. The young Australian population speaks over 300 languages, including indigenous and a population of more than 25% of young Australians are born overseas creating a rather multicultural young cohort (Australian Institute of Health and welfare). So social facts such as race, religion, culture and ethnicity are more diverse within current Australia and therefore are a social dysfunction with the Western neoliberal ideologies. Other social forces such as intergenerational trauma, incarceration, discrimination and forced relocation are experienced by the Indigenous young Australians as the diversity is clashing with the societal constructs. As a result, the current young Australians are unable to create the social bond and therefore the result is predetermined to suicide as Durkheim explains. This is shown statistically as suicide accounted for 27% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth within the last year experiencing mental health. Within Australian youth, sexuality is another social factor serving as a social dysfunction because statistically 6.1 per cent of Australian youth are identified as gay, lesbian or having another sexual orientation outside the social norm of western neoliberalism (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare). They experience discrimination, loss, anxiety and disconnect within their social group severely impacting their mental health. As a result, Durkheim argues that suicide is act predetermined if an individual cannot create a social bond within the social group of that society. In this case as the Australian society is becoming more diverse, the Western neoliberal values can no longer be the collective consciousness within the youth cohort. The diversity is becoming the social dysfunction resulting in youth committing suicide based on Durkheim theory. However, this is drawing limitation to the theory as is mainly focusing on social forces undermining economic and individual factors such as health conditions, drug misuse and financial problems leading to suicide. Deves, Maloney, et al. (2023). Calls for support as suicide revealed as leading cause of death for Indigenous children. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-10/calls-for-help-as-indigenous-child-suicide-rate-rises/102949238# Mission Australia. (2023). New report confirms biggest concerns for young people in Australia. https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/media-centre/media-releases/new-report-confirms-biggest-concerns-for-young-people-in-australia#:~:text=Young%20people%20in%20Australia%20are,the%20country's%20largest%20youth%20survey. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2024). Suicide & self-harm monitoring. https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/populations-age-groups/suicidal-and-self-harming-thoughts-and-behaviours Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2021). Australias youth. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/australias-youth/contents/demographicsRelating back to practice/ policy:
What sort of practice or policy ideas does the use of this theory suggest?
*There should be a guiding thread or 'thesis' stated clearly near the beginning, saying what the theory helps explain about the issue.
