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Suicides! Beware of the Summer Months! |
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By Tunji Toriola
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Sunday, 03 May 2009 |
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The light nights of Finnish summer have a darker side, finds Tunji Toriola. More suicides take place in late spring and early summer than in any other time of the year.
After a long, dark cold winter, we all look forward to beautiful flowers and warm sunshine. But spring and summer come with more personal perils than winter. When it was reported many years ago that suicide rates tend to be highest during late spring and early summer months compared to other periods, the report was greeted with suspicion and incredulity but over the years, an overwhelming body of evidence has confirmed this.
Yes, people kill themselves more during summer time. Incredible but true. It makes very little difference when the summer month is in different world regions; suicide rates are still highest during that time. In Europe, suicide rates are highest around May and June and in the southern hemisphere of Australia and New Zealand, around October and November which are the summer months in this hemisphere. If this is taken in the context of the suicide rates in many countries, the picture becomes quite alarming.
Worldwide, as many as 1 million people commit suicide yearly and 20 million attempt to commit suicide. This approximates 1 suicide every 40 seconds and 1 attempted suicide every 3 seconds! In many countries, it is one of the 4 leading causes of death among young people and in Finland, it is the fourth leading cause of death among working age men and the fifth leading cause of death among working age women.
But what is it about early summer that drives people to commit suicide more than other time periods? It has been quite difficult to explain but several explanations have been offered and some includebiological, meteorological and sociological factors.
Sunshine plays a prominent role with regards to the biological factors. Many mood regulating hormones such as melatonin, cortisol, L-tryptophan and serotonin are sunshine dependent and most of these hormones are reduced by sunshine. Low brain serotonin levels are associated with hopelessness, aggressive and impulsive behavior and lack of capacity to experience pleasure.
What makes this theory plausible is that violent suicides which are usually impulsive, rather than premeditated, show the most marked seasonal variations. Suicide rates are particularly high in the countries of the far north and especially at the time of year where these countries have days and days of light.
One sociological theory is called the "broken promise". This proposes that in vulnerable individuals, the holiday season promotes expectations that they will have relief from all their stressful situations and feel better afterwards but when these expectations are not met, the resulting disappointment triggers off suicidal reactions. It is however more likely that all these factors, biological, meteorological and sociological, act together and none is an independent causal factor.
Nevertheless, what is without doubt is that during the sunny early summer season we are approaching, there will be more deaths from suicide compared to the cold dark winter we just left behind. What a big irony! And lest I forget, most of the deaths take place on Mondays!
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