Durkheim had a finding that soldiers committed suicide more often than a common nonmilitary individual while also that the rates of suicides were lower in times of war than in times of peace. In a short empirical study by Almir Fajkic, Orhan Lepara, Martin Voracek, Nestor D.Kapusta, Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, Leena Amiri, Gernot Sonneck, and Kanita Dervic, they entitled their report Child and Adolescent Suicides in Bosnia and Herzegovina Before and After the War (1992-1995) their main focal point of this study was to measure the rates of suicides in children and young adults before and after the war that started in March 1992 and ended in November 1995. They annualized data five years before the war (1986-1991) and five years after (2001-2006). During the war, suicide statistics were not recorded on record so the timeline between 1992 to 1995 are not available. All unnatural, obvious deaths that required a autopsy were handled by the police and forensic department, while the suicides were handled by the physicians who would fill in the certificate that would be sent to the police and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the 5 years before the war, the found 135 young adult and children suicides, 74 of them were boys, 61 of them girls, 20 of them were just children between the ages of 10 and 14. They discovered that there were no suicides of any child under 10 years old was registered, also 14 of the suicides were not considered verified suicides because they all drowned. After the war there were 65 suicides, 45 boys and 20 girls, 15 of them being only the ages of 10 and 14. The main finding the authors found with this study was that the rates of young adult and child suicide in Bosnia and Herzegovina has gone one third after the war, just like Durkheim’s theory of suicide predicts that the rate of suicide goes down in wartime.
