Seasonality of suicides: environmental, sociological and biological covariations

Souêtre, E.; Salvati, E.; Belugou, J.L.; Douillet, Patrice; Braccini, T; Darcourt, G

doi:10.1016/0165-0327(87)90040-1

Cited by 97 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…In his study, the method of suicide was not examined and therefore it remains open whether shooting suicides would have had an effect on the observed autumn peak. A similar bimodal distribution with peaks in spring and autumn was also shown to be present in France by Souetre et al [13] , whereas Thompson [14] found an autumn peak for young males in Canada. McCleary et al [17] reported a fall/winter peak among young adolescents under 16 years of age in the USA.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Autumn Peak in Shooting Suicides of Children and Adolescents from Northern Finland

Lahti¹,

Räsänen²,

Karvonen³

et al. 2006

Neuropsychobiology

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Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among adolescents worldwide. Studies on the seasonal pattern of youth suicides are rare and the results are very contradictory and heterogeneous. Generally, suicide methods affect the pattern of suicide seasonality. Shooting is the most common suicide method among Finnish adolescents. We investigated whether shooting suicides of victims aged less than 18 years are correlated with a specific period of the year. Also, the seasonal pattern of shooting suicides in adolescents was compared with that of adult victims. Our data comprised 42 adolescent suicide victims and, for comparison, 1,926 adult suicide victims over the years 1988 to 2004 from Northern Finland.Of these, 59.5% (n = 25) of the adolescents and 28.8% (n = 554) of the adults had committed suicide by shooting.We observed that shooting suicides among the under-aged showed a significant peak in autumn (ratio 2.70, 95% CI: 1.97–3.42), while those of adult victims peaked in spring (ratio 1.19, 95% CI: 1.05–1.35). The monthly pattern of suicides correlated significantly with the mean duration of daily sunshine hours (trailing by 3 months) in the under-aged (r = 0.67, p = 0.016), but not in the adults (r = 0.06, p = 0.854). The role of firearm availability, psychosocial factors such as start of the school year, and some biological factors are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Autumn Peak in Shooting Suicides of Children and Adolescents from Northern Finland

Lahti¹,

Räsänen²,

Karvonen³

et al. 2006

Neuropsychobiology

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“…So far, however, no specific meteorological condition can be labelled as "suicide weather" (Dixon and Shulman 1983;Yan 2000;Deisenhammer 2003;Lee et al 2006). Higher temperatures appear to increase the risk of suicide (Lee et al 2006;Page et al 2007;Preti et al 2007), but negative correlations have also been found (Souêtre et al 1987(Souêtre et al , 1989, as well as no correlation at all (Partonen et al 2004b;Dixon et al 2007). In Finland, drops in temperature on successive days during spring have been found to be related to suicide rates in northern Finland (Partonen et al 2004c).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Climate impact on suicide rates in Finland from 1971 to 2003

et al. 2008

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Seasonal patterns of death from suicide are well-documented and have been attributed to climatic factors such as solar radiation and ambient temperature. However, studies on the impact of weather and climate on suicide are not consistent, and conflicting data have been reported. In this study, we performed a correlation analysis between nationwide suicide rates and weather variables in Finland during the period 1971-2003. The weather parameters studied were global solar radiation, temperature and precipitation, and a range of time spans from 1 month to 1 year were used in order to elucidate the dose-response relationship, if any, between weather variables and suicide. Single and multiple linear regression models show weak associations using 1-month and 3-month time spans, but robust associations using a 12-month time span. Cumulative global solar radiation had the best explanatory power, while average temperature and cumulative precipitation had only a minor impact on suicide rates. Our results demonstrate that winters with low global radiation may increase the risk of suicide. The best correlation found was for the 5-month period from November to March; the inter-annual variability in the cumulative global radiation for that period explained 40 % of the variation in the male suicide rate and 14 % of the variation in the female suicide rate, both at a statistically significant level. Long-term variations in global radiation may also explain, in part, the observed increasing trend in the suicide rate until 1990 and the decreasing trend since then in Finland.

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“…Photoperiod, changes in photoperiod, and light intensity have been proposed as possible environmental triggers (Goodwin and Jamison, 1990). However, upon careful scrutiny, the peak times of suicide occurrence (summarized in Altamura et al, 1999) do not match the peak of photoperiod (centered on the Summer Solstice in late June) or the time when photoperiodic changes are at their greatest (centered on the Spring equinox in March; Barker et al, 1994;Linkowski et al, 1992;Souetre et al, 1987;Tietjen & Kripke, 1994;Terao et al, 2002). Based on the temporal coincidence between seasonal peaks in tree pollen and peaks of suicide, we have hypothesize that seasonality of suicide could be driven by a combination of environmental triggers and vulnerability, i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mood-worsening with high-pollen-counts and seasonality: A preliminary report

Guzmán¹,

Tonelli²,

Roberts³

et al. 2007

Journal of Affective Disorders

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Background: Because aeroallergens produce inflammation in the respiratory airways, and inflammation triggers depression in vulnerable individuals, we hypothesized that mood sensitivity to pollen, the most seasonal aeroallergen, will be associated with a greater seasonality of mood. Since pollen is absent during winter, we specifically predicted that mood sensitivity to tree pollen will predict non-winter SAD but not winter SAD.

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Seasonality of suicides: environmental, sociological and biological covariations

Cited by 97 publications

References 36 publications

Autumn Peak in Shooting Suicides of Children and Adolescents from Northern Finland

Autumn Peak in Shooting Suicides of Children and Adolescents from Northern Finland

Climate impact on suicide rates in Finland from 1971 to 2003

Mood-worsening with high-pollen-counts and seasonality: A preliminary report

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