Blue Monday Is Real for Suicide: A Case–Control Study of 188,601 Suicides

Abstract

Many studies have reported that suicides tend to occur on Mondays. However, owing to a lack of controls, conclusive findings on the potential effects of a day of the week on suicides have been lacking. We analyzed public data for causes of death from 1997 to 2015 in the Republic of Korea. Accidental death was used as a control group. The probability of suicide on each day of the week according to age group was calculated. A total of 377,204 deaths (188,601 suicides and 188,603 accidental deaths) were used. The frequency of suicide was highest on Monday and decreased throughout the week until Saturday. Accidental death was highest on Saturday and showed no variations according to weekday. For people in their teens and 20s, the probabilities of suicide on Monday were 9% and 10% higher, respectively, than those on Sunday. As age increased, the differences in suicide probability according to the day of the week were attenuated. The so-called Blue Monday effect is real, particularly for people in their teens and 20s. Suicide prevention strategies that aim to attenuate the burden and stress of Mondays should be planned.

Demographic Risk Factors for Suicide among Youths in The Netherlands

“…The results agreed with some results from earlier studies done in other populations in some respects such as immigration background [13][14][15], suicide being more common on Mondays [20][21][22], and drowning being more common among adults. On the other hand there are also some results that contrast with studies done in other populations, such as not having more youth suicides in the weekend [3] or no increase in suicides in the period surrounding the release of 13 Reasons Why [18].…”

“…The difference in distribution of the youths and the Dutch population as a whole is not significant, so it cannot be concluded that there are differences in distribution of weekdays between youths and the population as a whole. The fact Monday shows a significantly higher amount of suicides among the whole population is consistent with recent studies in the UK, Australia and Korea [20][21][22]. 2013 243 317 291 278 265 266 197 2014 255 288 283 261 270 246 236 2015 236 295 303 311 264 260 202 2016 222 311 315 280 269 280 216 2017 254 353 292 278 264 254 222 Total 1210 1564 1484 1408 1332 1306 1073 3.9.…”

Analysis of veterans crisis line data: Temporal factors associated with the initiation of emergency dispatches

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study examining associations between temporal factors and the initiation of emergency dispatches by VCL responders and contacts rated as high risk by responders. As expected, at least one statistically significant variation was observed for most comparisons, indicating that there are temporal variations in the incidence of emergency dispatches much as there are temporal variations in the risk of suicide (Beauchamp et al, 2014;Corcoran et al, 2004;Kim et al, 2019;Kposowa & D'Auria, 2010;Massing & Angermeyer, 1985;Morselli, 1883). Given the public health relevance of suicide prevention and the growing reliance on crisis lines as a prevention and intervention strategy (116th Congress, 2020), the observed variations provide critical information to VCL responders who are tasked with addressing risk during contacts, crisis line policy makers who ensure adequate resources are available to meet public health demands, and health care policy makers who are responsible for creating and maintaining the infrastructure needed to facilitate referral processes.…”

Seasonal and Temporal Patterns of Homicides and Suicides in Cali and Manizales, Colombia: A Times-Series Analysis 2008–2015

“…Studies conducted in Hungary and Italy also show the same pattern in relation to these days (Preti & Miotto, 1998;Zonda, Bozsonyi, Veres, Lester, & Frank, 2009), and in the USA a similar pattern was found for suicide attempts by poisoning (Beauchamp, Ho, & Yin, 2014). In South Korea, Monday is the day with the highest probability of suicides (Kim et al, 2019) which could be explained by the theory of Gabennesch (1988). This theory indicates that suicides occur mainly on days when people have expectations of change in their lives and routines (e.g., "Monday blues"); on these days there is a greater risk of severe depressive episodes when these expected changes did not occur.…”