Sarah Fuller
Sarah Fuller is a fourth-year honours sociology student, minoring in psychology.
Her thesis examines the sociological roots of suicide for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) through Durkheim’s theory of suicide.
When she’s not studying, you can find her playing and watching ice hockey, hanging out with her friends, reading, taking terrible digital camera photos, and being stuck in Vancouver traffic.
Autistic people have disproportionately high rates of suicidality compared to global averages, and suicide is a leading cause of premature death for the population. There has been little sociological investigation into this, and insights from other disciplines fail to acknowledge social forces. This paper leverages Durkheim’s theory of suicide, in which social integration (social connection) and moral regulation (social norms) interact within a population to produce vulnerability to suicide.
Using an online questionnaire, autistic adults’ social connections, experiences with social norms, and history of suicidality were investigated. Preliminary data analysis suggests that low social integration was prevalent across the sample and was generally robustly correlated with suicidality, aligning with Durkheim’s understanding. However, experiences with moral regulation were diverse; in particular, subjective experiences of moral regulation varied in intensity throughout the sample. This suggests a potential theoretical expansion in which opposing individual levels of moral regulation can consolidate within a population as anomie, and nonetheless be implicated in suicidality.
This study ultimately contributes to a growing body of sociological literature examining neurodiversity and suicide, and results can be utilized to inform valuable suicide and mental health interventions targeting this population.
How did you become interested in this topic? Why did you choose it for your thesis?
I have always been interested in the sociology surrounding neurodiversity, and when we were recapping Durkheim’s suicide in my contemporary theory course, I realized its potential to relate to ASD. Cue my surprise when I found that this hadn’t been previously investigated! Considering how prevalent suicidality is for autistic people, I felt like this was a huge oversight; I had already considered doing an honours thesis, so I talked to my professor for the course about potentially being my supervisor, and the rest is history!
Can you summarize your project and its main findings for us?
My project is an exploratory analysis of how autistic suicidality aligns with Durkheim’s theory of suicide. Social integration was an important factor, but interestingly, anomie and moral regulation provided a higher-order variable for multiple distinct autistic suicide pathways that have not previously been united under a single framework. Overall, I found that anomie in conjunction with socially integrative processes contributed to multiple suicide pathways specific to autism.
What was your favourite part of doing research?
Putting it all together! Data collection was fun for sure, but the feeling of accomplishment once I analyzed the data and things actually clicked was addictive. Realizing that my findings had a solid storyline that made sense and could be modelled… the feeling is indescribable. Getting to share that with my classmates and celebrate their findings has made honours such a meaningful experience, and I am so proud of all of us for the work we’ve done.
What was the most difficult part of this learning journey? What was the most satisfying?
The most difficult part of this was the imposter syndrome. My classmates are some of the smartest people I’ve met, and for a while I felt like I was tricking everyone into thinking I was even half as smart. Gaining confidence in my own skills as a researcher and student has been a defining journey for me over the past 8 months. That confidence and security has also been the most satisfying part of this journey – knowing that I deserve to be here as much as my friends and that my research could change lives is unlike anything else I’ve experienced.
What have you learned during your research that has surprised you the most?
What surprised me was just how much time people are willing to spend doing an online questionnaire! Throughout undergrad you hear that online surveys should be ten minutes maximum or else nobody will want to do them; I had people spending multiple hours writing in-depth answers, providing hundreds if not thousands of words of personal experiences. I think it’s both a feature of the subject and the population: my participants care deeply about the autistic community’s well-being, and the topic hits close to home for all of them. I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who spent even five minutes of their time helping this thesis get off the ground and trusting me with their stories.
