This thesis is comprised of three essays that examine the impact of economic deterioration on the economy and society. It focuses on the interrelations among several socio-economic ills examined: sovereign defaults, excessive public debt, absence of economic growth and suicides. In an attempt to provide a holistic view of the topics covered, a combination of both economic and political explanatory variables are used. After discussing in Chapter 1 the motivation for this thesis, the Global Financial Crisis of 2007, Chapter 2, investigated the determinants of sovereign defaults. With the help of a logit regression and using a variety of political and economic variables, we show that both types of variables determine whether a county will default or not. Various robustness tests were also carried out that confirm these findings. In Chapter 3, the effect of the IMF intervention, once a country has defaulted, on its economic growth is investigated. The IMF intervention is measured as a dummy and the method used is the two stage least squares regression, where the instruments are the level of democracy and the UN Security council temporary membership. The findings suggest that the lagged effect of IMF rather than its contemporaneous effect is positive with respect to economic growth. In Chapter 4, the focus is on the sociological effects of the IMF intervention, with the dependent variable being suicide rates. The data sample has been split in many different ways, such as males/females, and the results of the research show that IMF intervention, unemployment and abortions increase suicides whereas alcohol consumption decreases them.

Western societies are increasingly becoming aware of the many problems facing boys and men. In Australia these problems include one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world, a high divorce rate, with most divorces being instigated by women, the breakdown of the family, and conflicting messages about what it is to be 'a man'. This study examines and describes how a group of 15-17 year old young men, who attend a private single sex school in Canberra, describe their beliefs and attitudes about becoming adult men. Participants were asked to respond to questions posed in a survey designed specifically for this research. These questions looked at relationships, gender roles, family, fatherhood, work and leisure and whether impending manhood appeared confusing. The context in which participants are situated is one of cultural and social flux; it was the current discourse and debate in Australia about how to be a man, men's issues, and the perception of men in crisis, which gave this study its broad contextual frame. Contrary to the conventional wisdom about boys/young men who attend elite private schools, the participants in this study emerged as egalitarian and flexible in their attitudes with regard to relationships, gender roles, parenting and work. This study therefore in part refutes the stereotypes, which surround students at private boys' schools, including those that purport that these students will hold predominantly hegemonic, traditional views about masculinity and their role as men. This thesis presents the voices of some three hundred young men, adding to an area of research, which is contested and vigorous in its development. By exploring the beliefs and attitudes of a group of Australians who are on the brink of manhood tentative insights have been offered, and, believe, some illumination gained. The dilemmas posed for meaningful adulthood for young men in Australia are very real. We need to listen to what young men have to say.

Scant attention has been given to occupational health hazards of Australian veterinarians. This study aimed to identify the major risk factors for occupational injury and disease, emotional health and suicide rates of veterinarians. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 45 veterinarians were carried out which revealed that a significant proportion of veterinarians were both injured, stressed and had incurred zoonotic diseases. Data linkage of the names of registered veterinarians in Western Australia with four Health Department of Western Australia databases was undertaken to provide supportive statistics on the conditions identified as being important in the interviews. The results of this latter analysis were inconclusive. Therefore a self-administered questionnaire was developed, which collected quantitative data on injuries, disease, stress and risk factors from 419 veterinarians. Since the in-depth interviews had identified stress and suicide ideation as being very significant for many of those interviewed, the Kessler 10+ scale for measuring psychological distress was included in the self-administered questionnaire. The data linkage was unable to provide accurate data about numbers of deaths of veterinarians and the records of coroners in Victoria and Western Australia which provided data on 89 veterinarians, were analysed to determine suicide rates. Despite the interviews providing considerable information about rates and risk factors for injuries, disease and stress, no statistical analyses were undertaken because they provided insufficient data for quantitative analyses. / Nevertheless, statistics derived from the morbidity database using data-linkage, will be useful in comparing injuries in any future studies of this type. Data collected from the self-administered questionnaire were subjected to Chi square, and non-parametric tests and logistic regression analyses using multiple imputation for missing values. Age-standardised and age-specific rates (ASR) were calculated for data on suicide in veterinarians derived from coroners' records obtained from Western Australia and Victoria using the Rates Calculator developed by Codde.' The interviews and the survey of 464 veterinarians showed that a significant proportion of veterinarians incurred injuries and zoonotic diseases, and were highly stressed and distressed. The interviews showed that a significant proportion of veterinarians expected to be injured and/or contract zoonotic diseases. It is suggested that this acceptance may, in part, account for the number of injuries that occur. Some of these injuries, especially in mixed animal veterinarians, may be attributable to poor facilities on farms and a lack of competent support in restraint of animals. There needs to be a cultural change with regard to safety if injury is to be reduced. Using the Chi-squared analyses of the survey data, injury was associated with several risk factors including being a practice owner and being in mixed animal practice, being younger and with having taken drugs such as marijuana in the past 12 months. / When all these variables were input into a logistic regression model, several of these risk factors were eliminated providing only three risk factors as predictors of injury. These were: having a back injury; taking drugs in the previous 12 months; and being between 35 and 54 years of age. Having high distress levels was not a predictor for injury. Analyses of responses to the KlOi- scale in the self-administered questionnaire revealed that the proportion of highly distressed respondents was double that of the Western Australian, New South Wales and Australian general populations which supports the findings from the interviews. Logistic regression provided three predictors for distress: being less than 35 years of age, having taken drugs in the past 12 months, and having a back injury, however having other workplace injuries was not a predictor. The findings that the suicide rate in this study was about four times that of the general Australian adult population, should be of major concern and signal that there may be factors specific to the veterinary profession that account for this high rate. This study has shown that there are high levels of psychological distress in veterinarians, especially practitioners, which suggests that veterinary practice may, in itself, be a stressful occupation. However, it may also be that some individuals with a predilection for distress, are being recruited into the veterinary profession. / Better selection techniques for recruiting veterinary students using an aptitude test as well as interviews, could identify those who were unsuited for becoming veterinarians or who required additional mentoring and support upon graduation. This could reduce stress, distress and suicide in the veterinary profession. Overall, 17 recommendations were made directed at improving the quality of data collection to obtain more reliable statistical outcomes, and suggesting ways of reducing injury, distress and zoonotic disease in veterinarians.

The theme of this thesis is suicide mortality in its various aspects, seen from an international, European perspective. It questions the existence of social (structural) concomitants to suicide mortality and investigates attitudes towards and legislation concerning suicide, as well as some historical processes pertaining to their development. Paper 1 replicates an authoritative study of the "correlates of suicide" on a national level in European countries. It shows that the findings of this study do not hold 16 years later, and it presents some ideas as to why these changes have taken place. It is suggested that there are no simple social correlates to suicide on this level, and that suicide rates tend to vary according to, among other things, international cultural influences. Paper 2 investigates penal legislation relating to suicide in European countries. Three types of punishable action are found: 1) aiding suicide, 2) abetting suicide, and 3) driving somebody to suicide. A majority of European countries include some of these acts in their criminal laws. However, the laws vary very widely between countries, thereby constituting a notable exception to the common presumption of uniformity of law. The scope of the criminalization and the severity of the penalties for the crimes covary both with cultural attitudes towards suicide and with suicide rates. The results are interpreted as indicating the existence of a cultural-normative system, consisting of the cultural attitudes towards suicide, the laws regulating the actions relating to suicide and, perhaps, religion. It influences the occurrence of suicide, mainly by offering individuals cultural models of behavior. Paper 3 describes the process towards the decriminalization of suicide (in 1864) in Sweden, its causes and consequences. It is suggested that the law change took place because of a) the international ideological currents of the time (the heritage of the Enlightenment), b) the examples presented by other European countries, and c) the radical changes in people's behavior. The reform was long overdue, and thus did not have a direct effect on suicide mortality. The increase in Swedish suicide rates in the 19th century is seen as connected with certain aspects of the "modernization" process. Paper 4 addresses the prospects and problems connected with the ap-plication of Talcott Parsons's functionalist theory to suicide research, in particular when contrasting it with Durkheim's theory. It is found that the latter, despite its shortcomings, still dominates socially oriented suicide research. Parsons's theory is seen as implicating the cultural primacy of suicide mortality. Its general usability is, however, highly uncertain since many of its essential constituent parts are not well suited to the subject. A model for suicide rates, consisting of cultural (domestic and inter-national), political, social, diffusion and availability factors is presented. Taken together, the papers constitute a case for cultural (as opposed to socio-structural) research into suicide mortality. They question the repeated testing of structural variables in favor of creating cultural indicators. They suggest some new lines of research, and call for a consistently universal perspective on the problem of suicide and suicide mortality. / <p>Härtill fyra uppsatser.</p>

This study adds to the existing research concerning ecological relationships between suicide rates, social integration, and urbanicity in the U.S. Age-sex-race adjusted five-year averaged suicide rates for 1993-1997 and various measures of urbanicity are used. Some proposed relationships held true, while others indicate that social integration and urbanicity are so intertwined in their effects on suicide that no clear, unidirectional pattern emerges. The religious affiliation measure captured unique variations in the role religion plays in this relationship; depending on how urbanicity was measured. Findings suggest closer attention needs to be paid to how both urbanicity and religious affiliation are measured. Overall, vast regional variation exists in suicide rates and the role of urbanization can be misunderstood if not properly specified.