Seasonal effects on suicide rates

Myth: People are at Increased Risk for Suicide During the Winter Months

A common belief is that suicide rates peak during the cold and dark months of the winter season. This widely held notion is actually a myth bolstered by 'media coverage associating suicide with the holiday season . In truth, research shows that the prevalence of suicide is actually most frequent during late spring and early summer months/seasons.

Belief in the Myth

It seems intuitive that suicide would peak during the winter months. Indeed, it is easy to believe that the difficulty of enduring harsh meteorological climates, contracting viral diseases such as pneumonia and hypothermia, and the minimal amount of sunlight could lead to emotional states of helplessness and gradually ensue in suicidal behaviors. . Moreover, some may believe that “holiday cheer amplifies loneliness and hopelessness in people who have lost loved ones, or who have high expectations of renewed happiness during the holiday season, only to be disappointed.” . Finally, the general underlying conception holds that depressive moods-during cold and dark winter months-have a correlation with suicidal attempts, idealizations, and plans. This, however, has been deemed false due to "present findings suggest that the seasonal distribution of suicides indeed is a counterintuitive fact for everyday reasoning.

Refuting The Myth

As stated by Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman in their book "Seasons of Life", the seasonality of death is primarily being influenced by one’s living standards. Meteorological fluctuations have amounted in a steady decline in mortality rates from diseases “that had previously been most severe in the summer months, such as dysentery, gastroenteritis, tuberculosis, and other infectious and parasitic diseases…resulting from poor socioeconomic progress resulting from increased prosperity and social welfare.”

United States National Research Studies

Even though the media’s primary focus, insofar, on suicides during the winter season, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics report that suicide rates in the United States are, to contrary belief, the lowest during the winter months and highest in the summer and springtime. In consonance with F. Stephen Bridges’s article “Seasonal Changes in Suicide in the United States, 1971 to 2000”, his findings assert that "A high incidence in early spring (April and May) and…also a low incidence in winter". Bridges's unique methodology was examined in three specific ways: analyzing the monthly distribution of suicides within a time from of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s; secondly, a chi-square test was provided to demonstrate the exact evenness of the monthly averages; and finally a "harmonic time series model" was applied with six observable harmonic cycles within given year. Conforming to the study's results, the 1970's distributed a large incidence (p<.01) in its bimodal paradigm. Additionally, evidential data shows that "about 47% of the total variances can be explained by the seasonal components" within that given decade. In regards to the next decade (1980-1990), "The seasonal component of suicide incidence for the time period 1981 through 1990 is clearly significant and records about a 27.7% increase in seasonal contribution by comparison with the previous period". As for the concluding decade in the study (1990-2000), results signify comparable data because of the "the significant seasonal rhythm were explained in 63% of the total variation." . Another study by French sociologist Émile Durkheim presents similar research results in refuting the myth that suicides occur more frequently during winter seasons/months. Insofar of his conclusive experimental findings, Durkheim reported that most suicides occurred in the spring, but not summer. In cultivating an explanation for this particular scrutiny, Durkheim sided with his sociological cognizance and digressed from the role of nature. From what Durkheim professes, most suicides took place in spring because "everything begins to awake; activity is resumed, relations spring up, interchanges increase. In other words, it is the density of human interactions, and not the environment that caused higher incidence of suicide in spring or summer." . Furthermore, researchers who found a linked association between seasonality and suicide ascertained comparable results in that suicides do actually have a peak during the spring or summer. . ,.

International Research Studies

According to F. Stephen Bridges (a researcher on homicide victims and victims of homicide-suicide), recent research from industrialized countries such as: Finland, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, and England and Wales has provided a relevant amount of information in light of a noticed pattern in the decrease of suicide seasonality over the past few decades. Within the country of Greece, research studies indicate that the seasonal variations of suicide mortality are “more frequent during the spring and summer months…but no regular annual rhythm”. Interestingly enough, a handful of researchers that conducted these meteorological studies stated that "the seasonal variation of suicide follows more closely the seasonal variation of sunshine rather than the corresponding variation of temperature". As for the tropical country of Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, studies have deduced that "the peak number of suicides occurred in spring (November) in men and women of Rio Grande do Sul state and in men of Parana and Santa Catarina states, and in early summer (January) for women of Parana´ state." When analyzing photoperiod, there have been very few scientific assessment studies that have focused on seasonal suicide variations within the southern hemisphere because most data has been of what is known about the seasonal variation in suicide rate originates from studies have been ordained in the northern hemisphere. In conjunction with oversees research studies, a former member in the field of Preventive Medicine, Eleni Petridou, conducted a collaborative international study that involved twenty different countries. The documented outcome was an early summer peak in suicides. Upon hers and her research colleagues’ conclusion, “seasonal variation in suicide incidence could be explained by the increase in sunshine in summer months because of a relationship between sunshine, high temperatures and suicide rate.” </ref>,. In opposition to the corresponding results above, Australian researchers, J. Edwards and F. Whitlock, that studied the seasonal variations in accordance with suicidal rates found a “spring peak in the number of suicides committed in Brisbane, Australia, but the results were not statistically significant…and also that Dublin reported that the incidence of suicide varied according to seasons in the northern hemisphere, but contrary results were found for the southern hemisphere.” .