Ill Wind Blows on ‘Stormy Monday’ : Health: Study by UC Irvine scientists finds there is a higher incidence of suicide on Mondays among some groups while debunking certain seasonal theories.
Blues singers who for generations have bemoaned the depression and Angst of waking up on “stormy Monday” apparently knew what they were singing about.
A new study by two UC Irvine social scientists not only supports the popular belief there is a higher than normal incidence of suicide on Mondays, but found it most prevalent among middle-aged men.
The nationwide study of suicide demographics--published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health and based on information from 357,393 officially reported suicides between 1973 and 1985--supported many of the popular beliefs about suicide, while debunking a few.
For instance, there are fewer suicides than normal during the holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but suicide on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day is the highest for any single day of the year, mostly involving people in their 20s and 30s.
Generally, sociologists Richard McCleary and Kenneth Chew found that there isn’t any real overall seasonal patterns when it comes to most suicides, but there are narrower trends among specific age and gender groups.
“What’s new and startling is how certain peaks can be determined--like on Mondays or the fifth day of each month--but only among certain age groups and especially among males,” said Chew.
The duo found wide variations in the demographics, which they said rules out one other highly popular view--the century-old “bioclimatic theory” that argues suicide peaks may be linked closely to weather and seasonal changes.
“The arguments are that in the summer, the higher temperatures can lead to more violent behavior, while the winters can be unusually bleak and depressing,” Chew said. In their study, however, “we find no such uniformity, no such across-the-board seasonal-change effect on all age groups that would support the bioclimatic concept. It would seem that the impact of social factors should be further explored.”
Although they did come across suicide peaks during those two seasons, this phenomenon occurs in a surprising and highly specific manner: Suicide incidence for males under 16 is unusually high in the winter and low in the summer, while the reverse is found for males over 80.
“The teen-age experience would make the more obvious sense, since winter would be a highly intense period in school and summer would be a less stressful school-vacation time,” said McCleary, noting that a similar drop in suicides for those under 16 occurs in December during the school break.
An explanation for the elderly phenomenon is harder to come by. “But one can argue that low incidence in winter is tied to the heightened social activity and family visits, such as over the Christmas holidays,” McCleary said.
The UCI study determined for the first time that the “Monday effect” is focused in the midlife bracket, ages 41 to 65, and primarily among men, the traditional breadwinner of this generation.
To such men, the beginning of a week only underscores more painfully the state of their lives and bleak outlook.
“These could be men who are still working, who are going through the midlife crisis,” McCleary said. “Their careers have already peaked, they are confronting retirement and their mortality. Life now seems to anticlimactic to them.”
Mindful of the widespread joblessness of recent years, McCleary adds: “In this category, we may also be talking about the unemployed, the ones who feel the humiliation of yet another week without a job or even prospect of one.”
Yet another peak period for some--the first-of-the-month surge, specifically the fifth day of the month--parallels much of the Monday factors, except that it is centered on men 65 or older. Women are affected far less because, the UCI team suggested, they generally have not held jobs outside the home, and they usually have more solid support networks.
Although the month’s first week would ordinarily seem a cheery one, what with the pension checks arriving, “it’s a devastating time for others, particularly if they are widowed and feeling totally helpless and lost,” McCleary said.
These same social dynamics, the same “ebb and flow” of human ups and downs, are at work in the end-of-the-year holiday season, maintained McCleary and Chew, whose findings of an overall lower suicide incidence during this period confirm earlier demographic studies at UC San Diego.
And specialists in therapy and counseling fields pertaining to suicidal behavior tend to agree with the academic findings.
For example, the New Hope Telephone Counseling Center, an Orange County hot line for suicide prevention, reports a surge in calls during the holidays. But, as one coordinator puts it, “the cases of extreme depression and aloneness are certainly out there in larger numbers. However, we have found that the holidays don’t necessarily result in more suicides.”
Indeed, the Thanksgiving and Christmas period--the traditional height of family togetherness--can “work both ways,” explains Lisa Blitz, assistant director for youth services with the Orange County-based Community Services Programs, a family counseling organization.
“By it’s very nature, this time of year can of course generate greater anxiety and sense of isolation. At the same time, more people try even harder to put their lives back together--this time of year, more than any other,” Blitz said.
Chew depicted it this way: “Some people literally hang on, hoping to make it through the holiday. They hope that things will be better. They hope that this time there won’t be that terrible letdown, that overwhelming sense of failing.”
