{"id":1121,"date":"2014-01-10T18:58:55","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T21:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nchspressroom.wordpress.com\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2014-01-10T18:58:55","modified_gmt":"2014-01-10T21:58:55","slug":"fact-or-fiction-suicides-increase-during-the-holiday-season-and-winter-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/2014\/01\/10\/1121\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact or Fiction: Suicides Increase During the Holiday Season and Winter Months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><\/strong>PREMISE:\u00a0 It is commonly believed that more people are likely to commit suicide\u00a0during the holidays and winter months as a result of stress, depression, and\/or loneliness.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fact or Fiction:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <em>FICTION<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Contrary to popular belief,\u00a0the number of suicides do not increase during the holiday season or winter months. In fact, after sorting suicides by month for all years (1999-2010), December ranked as the lowest or second to lowest month for suicide in all 12 years. November also fell in the bottom 5 months for suicide during all\u00a012 years, and February was either lowest or second to lowest for\u00a010 out of 12 years. The number of suicides varied widely during the month of January, and no consistent trend was found.<\/p>\n<p>Suicides\u00a0were actually most numerous during the late spring and summer months of May, June, July, and August. May appears to be the month with the highest incidence of\u00a0suicide. May was among the top 3 months for suicide during all 12 years. June was listed in the top 3 for 3 out of 12 years, July for 8 out of 10 years, and August for 6 out of\u00a012 years.<\/p>\n<p>Criminologists and psychologists have followed this phenomenon for decades, and argue that high temperatures may increase discomfort and facilitate disinhibition, aggression and violence, generating an increase in suicidal acts (Anderson, 1989; Kim, Y., Kim, H., &amp; Kim, D., 2011; Page, L., Hajat, S. &amp; Kovats, S. R., 2007).<\/p>\n<p>More Information:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Suicides by Month\" href=\"http:\/\/nchspressroom.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/01\/suicide_season.xlsx\">LINK TO EXCEL SPREADSHEET<\/a><\/p>\n<p>References<\/p>\n<p>Anderson, 1989; Page, L., Hajat, S. &amp; Kovats, S. R. (2007). Relationship between daily suicide counts and temperature in England and Wales. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 191, 106-112.<\/p>\n<p>Anderson, C. (1989). Temperature and aggression: ubiquitous effects of heat on occurrence of human violence. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 74\u2013 96.<\/p>\n<p>Kim, Y., Kim, H., &amp; Kim, D. (2011). Association between daily environmental temperature and suicide mortality in Korea. Psychiatry Research, 186(2\u20133), 390-396.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/WONDER.cdc.gov\">http:\/\/WONDER.cdc.gov<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PREMISE:\u00a0 It is commonly believed that more people are likely to commit suicide\u00a0during the holidays and winter months as a result of stress, depression, and\/or loneliness. Fact or Fiction:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 FICTION Contrary to popular belief,\u00a0the number of suicides do not increase during the holiday season or winter months. In fact, after sorting suicides by month for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49481,15995],"tags":[60196,14284],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}