Suicide Has Its Seasons, Scientists Say

Blues singers who for generations have bemoaned the depression and Angst of waking up on “stormy Monday” apparently know what they are singing about.

A new study by two UC Irvine social scientists supports the popular belief that there is a higher incidence of suicide on Mondays than other days of the week, mostly by 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 from 1973 to 1985--supports many popular beliefs, while debunking a few.

For instance, there are fewer suicides than average between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the number 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.

Otherwise, sociologists Richard McCleary and Kenneth Chew found that generally, there aren’t any seasonal patterns, although there are trends among specific age and gender groups.

Not only did male suicides outnumber females 3-to-1, but men were more likely to be affected by certain cycles.

“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,” Chew said.

(In 1990, 30,780 people nationwide attempted suicide, up from 30,407 in 1988, according to the Census Bureau. For California, 3,871 attempted suicides were reported in 1988, the latest year available for state figures.)

The duo found wide demographic variations that they said rule out another popular belief--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 boys under 16 is unusually high in the winter and low in the summer, while the reverse is found for men 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 boys under 16 occurs in December during the school break.

An explanation for the pattern among the elderly 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 breadwinners 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 be 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 in the same age group 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 cheerier 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--traditionally, the 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 its 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.”