Journal of Affective Disorders
Volume 81, Issue 2 , Pages 133-139 , August 2004

Analysis of the seasonal pattern in suicide

  • Timo Partonen

      Affiliations

    • Department of Mental Health and Alcohol Research, National Public Health Institute, Mannerheimintie 166, FIN-00300 Helsinki, Finland
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +358-9-4744-8660; fax: +358-9-4744-8478.
  • ,
  • Jari Haukka

      Affiliations

    • Department of Mental Health and Alcohol Research, National Public Health Institute, Mannerheimintie 166, FIN-00300 Helsinki, Finland
  • ,
  • Heikki Nevanlinna

      Affiliations

    • Geomagnetic Research Division, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland
  • ,
  • Jouko Lönnqvist

      Affiliations

    • Department of Mental Health and Alcohol Research, National Public Health Institute, Mannerheimintie 166, FIN-00300 Helsinki, Finland

Received 8 November 2002 ,Revised 27 May 2003 ,Accepted 2 June 2003.

References 

  1. Breslow, N.E., Day, N.E., 1994. Statistical Methods in Cancer Research – Volume II: The Design and Analysis of Cohort Studies. Oxford University Press, New York.
  2. Cleveland WS, Devlin SJ. Locally-weighted regression: an approach to regression analysis by local fitting. J. Am. Stat. Assoc. 1988;83:596–610
  3. Cleveland RB, Cleveland WS, McRae JE, Terpenning I. STL: a seasonal-trend decomposition procedure based in loess. J. Official Stat. 1990;6:3–73
  4. Eastwood MR, Peacocke J. Seasonal patterns of suicide, depression and electroconvulsive therapy. Br. J. Psychiatry. 1976;129:472–475
  5. Gorney DJ. Solar cycle effects on the near-earth space environment. Rev. Geophys. 1990;28:315–336
  6. Harris EC, Barraclough B. Suicide as an outcome for mental disorders: a meta-analysis. Br. J. Psychiatry. 1997;170:205–228
  7. Hastie TJ, Tibshirani RJ. Generalized Additive Models. London: Chapman and Hall; 1990;
  8. Henriksson MM, Aro HM, Marttunen MJ, Heikkinen ME, Isometsä ET, Kuoppasalmi KI, et al. Mental disorders and comorbidity in suicide. Am. J. Psychiatry. 1993;150:935–940
  9. Ito H, Kawashima R, Awata S, Ono S, Sato K, Goto R, et al. Hypoperfusion in the limbic system and prefrontal cortex in depression: SPECT with anatomic standardization technique. J. Nucl. Med. 1996;37:410–414
  10. Jones RH, Ford PM, Hamman RF. Seasonality comparison among groups using incidence data. Biometrics. 1988;44:1131–1144
  11. Kay RW. Geomagnetic storms: association with incidence of depression as measured by hospital admission. Br. J. Psychiatry. 1994;164:403–409
  12. Maes M, Meltzer HY, Suy E, De Meyer F. Seasonality in severity of depression: relationships to suicide and homicide occurrence. Acta Psychiatr. Scand. 1993;88:156–161
  13. Menvielle M, Berthelier A. The K-derived planetary indices: description and availability. Rev. Geophys. 1991;29:413–432
  14. Mortensen PB, Agerbo E, Erikson T, Qin P, Westergaard-Nielsen N. Psychiatric illness and risk factors for suicide in Denmark. Lancet. 2000;355:9–12
  15. Nevanlinna H, Kataja E. An extension of the geomagnetic activity series aa for two solar cycles (1844–1868). Geophys. Res. Lett. 1993;20:2703–2706
  16. Parker G, Gao F, Machin D. Seasonality of suicide in Singapore: data from the equator. Psychol. Med. 2001;31:549–553
  17. Partonen, T., Haukka, J., Viilo, K., Hakko, H., Pirkola, S., Isometsä, E., Lönnqvist, J., Särkioja, T., Väisänen, E., Räsänen, P., 2003. Cyclic time patterns for death from suicide in northern Finland. J. Affect. Disord., in press.
  18. Petridou E, Papadopoulos FC, Frangakis CE, Skalkidou A, Trichopoulos D. A role of sunshine in the triggering of suicide. Epidemiology. 2002;13:106–109
  19. Preti A. The influence of seasonal change on suicidal behaviour in Italy. J. Affect. Disord. 1997;44:123–130
  20. Rihmer Z, Rutz W, Pihlgren H, Pestality P. Decreasing tendency of seasonality in suicide may indicate lowering rate of depressive suicides in the population. Psychiatry Res. 1998;81:233–240
  21. Russell CT, McPherron RL. Semiannual variation of geomagnetic activity. J. Geophys. Res. 1973;78:92–108
  22. Salib E, Gray N. Weather conditions and fatal self-harm in North Cheshire 1989−1993. Br. J. Psychiatry. 1997;170:473–477
  23. Watanabe Y, Hillman DC, Otsuka K, Bingham C, Breus TK, Cornelissen G, et al. Cross-spectral coherence between geomagnetic disturbance and human cardiovascular variables at non-societal frequencies. Chronobiologia. 1994;21:265–272
  24. Yip PSF, Chao A, Chiu CWF. Seasonal variation in suicides: diminished or vanished. Br. J. Psychiatry. 2000;177:366–369

PII: S0165-0327(03)00137-X

doi: 10.1016/S0165-0327(03)00137-X

Journal of Affective Disorders
Volume 81, Issue 2 , Pages 133-139 , August 2004