ABSTRACT
The differential effects of different institutions are a particularly ill-developed area of research in Britain. As Oxtoby (1967) has pointed out, 'even now, almost all of the work on the effects of institutional environment on student behaviour and development is being done in America'. It is, however, possible that the variations in suicide rates are caused—at least in part—by specifically environmental factors. Environmental explanations do not, of course, deny the operation of psychological factors. If they did, they would be in the ludicrous position of positing that all the individuals in a particular environment will commit suicide. Instead, they see the suicide rate as resulting from a sum of probabilities: 'if the social environment becomes more hostile, the probability that "psychologically-prone" individuals will commit suicide increases'. It certainly seems clear that the socialisation pressures at Oxbridge are very different from those in most other institutions.
