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Talk:Seasonal effects on suicide rates

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Corrections

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"This, however, has been deemed false due to "present findings suggest that the seasonal distribution of suicides indeed is a counterintuitive fact for everyday reasoning"." --This statement needs to be cited. Also, the grammar is weird. Needs to be reworded. Mnortonb (talk) 20:43, 26 March 2012 (UTC) Mnortonb (talk) 20:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DYK

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Given the controversy surrounding this entry, perhaps the originator could remove his nomination of it for Did you know...? so people working on DYK don't waste their time. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No reason for that, is there?--Carabinieri (talk) 21:46, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re-organization

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I've moved the paragraphs around and changed some of the section titles. The structure makes more sense to me like this. Feel free to revert my edit, if you disagree with it.--Carabinieri (talk) 19:06, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sunlight's effect on suicide rates

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@Equercioli: I moved your recent addition to the green box below, because it looks like original research, which is against WP's policies. There's probably stuff worth keeping here, but it would need to be re-written according to WP's standards. If you want to try another draft, please consider posting it on the talkpage first so other editors can give feedback. You might want to read these policies/guidelines first: WP:COI, original research, and reliable sources for biomedical claims.

Extended content

The presence of confounding factors, such as having excess time to ruminate during summer vacation from school, makes it challenging to separate the role of sunlight on suicide deaths from other emotional, cultural, and social influences. Several studies have found that suicide fatalities in various countries peak during the spring and summer months[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] when bright light reaches its maximum and during daytime.[3][8][4] Some medical research, on the other hand, offers evidence that it is the reduction in luminosity during the autumn and winter season that causes a drop in serotonin[9] hormonal levels and eventually triggers suicidal depressive moods[10][11] Also, post-partum mothers achieve their highest point of depression in the winter season, according to a recent study.[12] In her article, Quercioli (2012)[13] proposes a new method to disentangle the effect of sunlight on suicides. The work utilizes data available at the[14] a comprehensive catalogue of all types of casualties, based on the underlying cause of death, for the U.S., collected for the years starting in 1968 until 2012. So, suicides are organized by geographical region, urbanization,[15][16] size of the metropolitan statistical area where the incident took place, as well as the age, race, gender and ethnicity of the deceased individual.

Following the logic in Quercioli (2012)[13] individuals who reside in neighboring counties, located across time zone lines, will have experienced an almost identical natural environment. For instance, they have had a common climate, similar culture, history and religious beliefs. They also enjoy comparable economic and social conditions. Yet, they — crucially, for this study — differ in the number of hours of sunlight they receive in any day. Individuals living on the West side of a time zone line receive one less hour of light at night, compensated by an extra hour of light in the morning. But, since people generally rise after sunrise but sleep long after sunset, this one-hour shift is not a neutral change. Naturally, it offers a discontinuity in the daylight exposure time during daytime. Such a discontinuity can be exploited to definitively test the role of luminosity in self-inflicted deaths.

Historically, for the U.S., white men constitute one of the highest-risk category for suicide deaths. Focusing on them, and for observations collected over about 30 years, from 1979 to 2007, Quercioli (2012)[13] runs a regression of suicidal deaths on demographic variables, as well as rural versus urban-area variables, and on an indicator variable for weather those individuals were living in counties situated on the West side of a time zone line. The statistical work is repeated for all the three, on-land time zones: Eastern and Central, Central and Mountain and Mountain and Pacific Time (ET/CT, CT/MT, and MT/PT). The statistical results point to a large (about 8%), significant increase in fatalities, for counties located on the West side of each of the three time-zone lines. Since all variables — except for location of the county — are controlled for, this result is unambiguously attributable to that one less hour of sunlight, during daytime, experienced by counties located on the West. This difference has a 98% statistical significance, and translates to about 740 deaths — for counties along time zones, only — during the 30-year period of the study. The study strongly suggests that the link between (lack of) sunlight and suicidal deaths is a fruitful one for future research in this area.

References

  1. ^ Lambert, G., Reid C., Kaye D., Jennings G. & Esler M. (2003). Increased suicide rate in the middle-aged and its association with hours of sunlight. ‘’Am J Psychiatry’’, 160, 793-795.
  2. ^ Lester, D. (2003). Seasonal variation in suicidal deaths. ‘’BJPsych’’, 118, 627-628.
  3. ^ a b Petridou, E., Papadopoulos F.C., Frangakis C.E., Skalkidou A., & D. Trichopoulos. (2002). A role of sunshine in the triggering of suicide. ‘’Epidemiology’’, 13 (1), 106-109.
  4. ^ a b Science Daily. (2009). “Greenland's Constant Summer Sunlight Linked To Summer Suicide Spike”
  5. ^ Eastwood, M.R. & Peacocke J. (1976). Seasonal patterns of suicide, depression and electroconvulsive therapy. ‘’BJPsych’’, 129, 472-475.
  6. ^ Gallerani, M. et al. (1996). The time for suicide. ‘’Psychological Medicine’’, 26 (4), 867-870.
  7. ^ Preti, A. & Miotto P. (2001). Diurnal variations in suicide by age and gender in Italy. ‘’Journal of Affective Disorders’’, 65 (3), 253-261.
  8. ^ A role of sunshine in the triggering of suicide. ‘’Epidemiology’’, 13 (1), 106-109.
  9. ^ Lambert, G., Reid C., Kaye D., Jennings G. & Esler M. (2002). Effect of sunlight and season on serotonin turnover in the brain. ‘’The Lancet’’, 360 (9348), 1840-1842.
  10. ^ Nishimura, M. et al. (2004). Suicide and occupation: further supportive evidence for their relevance. ‘’Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry’’, 28 (1), 83-87.
  11. ^ Bhattacharjee, Y. (2007). Is Internal Timing Key to Mental Health? ‘’Science’’, 317 (5844), 1488-1490.
  12. ^ Dorothy Sit, Howard Seltman, Katherine L. Wisner. (2011). Seasonal Effects on Depression Risk and Suicidal Symptoms. ‘’Postpartum Women Depress Anxiety’’, 28(5), 400–405.
  13. ^ a b c Quercioli, E. (2012). Time zone lines and suicides: west side story. ‘’Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica’’, 126: 153–154.
  14. ^ Center for Disease Control WONDER "Compressed Mortality Files"
  15. ^ CDC National Center for Health Statistics. (2001). ‘’NCHS Urban-Rural Classification Scheme’’.
  16. ^ Stack, S. (1993). The Effect of Modernization on Suicide in Finland: 1800-1984. ‘’Sociological Perspectives’’, 36(2), 137-148.

Let me know if you have questions. —PermStrump(talk) 21:53, 3 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

study finds that "days of sunlight" are not statistically significant, just the season

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White RA, Azrael D, Papadopoulos FC, Lambert GW, Miller M. Does suicide have a stronger association with seasonality than sunlight? BMJ Open. 2015;5(6):e007403. Published 2015 Jun 3. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007403

This kind of goes back to the potential of non-weather causes: social behavior or whatever. I'm not invested in this article but it eould be great if someone found a suitable place for this. I think it would be of use as a citation for some questions/statements. Tkech (talk) 16:02, 4 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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