How successful was Durkheim in demonstrating that the causes of suicide are to be found in society rather than the individual?

How successful was Durkheim in demonstrating that the causes of suicide are to be found in society rather than the individual?

Unlike most others before him who believed that influences such as inherited mental disorder are of paramount importance in causing suicide, Emile Durkheim chose to look instead at suicide purely as a social fact, rather than the act of an individual. Through analysis of government figures on suicide rates, Durkheim tried to measure and explain suicide as social phenomena. In his book, "Suicide: a study in sociology", Durkheim was critical of both physical and psychological explanations of suicide as he claimed that neither accounted for the stability of suicide rates over time and space, and in looking at the act of suicide as a social phenomena, Durkheim developed a way of examining the social world that was both unique to him at the time, and of continued importance to this day.
At the time preceding Durkheim's writings on suicide (published 1897), incr...