From UCR
Hey, watch out for those summer Wednesdays. Contrary to popular belief, more suicides occur: 1. in the summer rather than the winter and 2. on Wednesdays, not Mondays. That's the finding of researchers, who offer up theories why. With e-mail, cell phones and the ubiquity of modern communication, it may be that the gray, holiday, winter blues that prompted suicidal funks may be a thing of the past; it also may be that in summer, folks go on extravagant vacations and show off their affluence, leading to negative status comparisons. Because of conflictive attitudes about work -- we gotta have it and it has become more stressful than ever -- the middle of the week may be when pressures get most extreme, they say. They analyzed data on suicides from 2000 to 2004, finding that Thursdays were the least common day for suicides, while spring followed closely on summer's heels as the deadly season. Researchers say more work is needed to assess "temporal factors," including season (as in seasonal affective disorders) and clime, as well as mental state and their roles in suicide.
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