Suicide, Society and Liveability
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does Émile Durkheim’s 1897 study of suicide tell us about the social conditions that shape whether life feels worth living and how does a current project add to our understanding?
Laurie Taylor is joined by Alexander Oaten, from the University of Lincoln, and Sarah Huque, from the University of Edinburgh who are involved in Discovering Liveability: Co-producing Alternatives to Suicide Prevention - a seven-year Wellcome Trust funded collaboration. This sets out to challenge the way suicide prevention is usually framed. Rather than focusing on moments of crisis, the project asks a different question: how can we create societies in which life feels more liveable and what insights can you gain from people who have experienced suicidal thoughts?
Producer: Natalia Fernandez Editor: Robyn Read
If you’re suffering distress or despair and need support, including urgent support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline
Transcript
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| 0:28.8 | They did know that I was different. |
| 0:31.7 | You had kids together. |
| 0:33.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:33.5 | Then you met. |
| 0:34.3 | Then we met. |
| 0:35.2 | The Gift. |
| 0:36.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.0 | This is a Thinking Aloud podcast from the BBC, and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud, |
| 0:46.3 | go to our website at BBC.co.com. |
| 0:50.5 | Hello, and a warm welcome to this new series of Thinking Aloud. |
| 0:56.3 | Actually, today's topic rather forcefully reminds me of the welcome to sociology, |
| 1:02.3 | which I typically extend to first-year students in my opening seminar at York University. |
| 1:08.0 | Look, let's begin, I'd say, with a topic which on the face of it would seem |
| 1:12.6 | like the very last one to have a sociological explanation, the highly individualistic topic |
| 1:18.8 | of suicide. But that, I then point out, was exactly the phenomenon which exercised |
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