ArticleBMJ open2015
Does suicide have a stronger association with seasonality than sunlight?
Article in BMJ open, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- [Weather and suicide : Association between meteorological variables and suicidal behavior-a systematic qualitative review article].Der Nervenarzt · 2020Pooled it
- Temporal Patterns of Engagement and Sentiment in a Suicide Prevention Mobile App: Three-Year Observational Study.JMIR mental health · 2026Observational
- [Association between temperature, duration of sunshine and suicidal mortality in Germany (2015-2023)].Der Nervenarzt · 2026Article
- Seasonal and cultural effects on calendar day variations in trauma incidence in Japan.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The effect of seasonal and meteorological factors on suicide rates in the Lithuanian population in 2001-2021: a case‑crossover study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Re-evaluating National Suicide Prevention Month: Strategic Timing and Enhanced Impact.Critical public health · 2025Article
- The effectiveness of an Australian community suicide prevention networks program in preventing suicide: a controlled longitudinal study.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Changing Seasonal Pattern of Suicides in Korea Between 2000 and 2019.Psychiatry investigation · 2022Article
- Sunshine, temperature and suicidal behaviour in patients treated with antidepressants: an explorative nested case-control study.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Temporal patterns of suicide and circulatory system disease-related mortality are inversely correlated in several countries.BMC psychiatry · 2021Article
- Short-term effect of apparent temperature on daily emergency visits for mental and behavioral disorders in Beijing, China: A time-series study.The Science of the total environment · 2020Article
- The effect of meteorological variables on suicide.International journal of biometeorology · 2020Article
- Spatiotemporal clustering of suicides in the US from 1999 to 2016: a spatial epidemiological approach.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2019Article
- Suicide and Ambient Temperature: A Multi-Country Multi-City Study.Environmental health perspectives · 2019Article
- Seasonality of cerebrospinal fluid monoamine metabolite concentrations and their associations with meteorological variables in humans.Journal of psychiatric research · 2018Article
- Air Pollution and Suicide in 10 Cities in Northeast Asia: A Time-Stratified Case-Crossover Analysis.Environmental health perspectives · 2018Article
- Impact of Laws Regulating Pain Clinics on Opioid Prescribing and Opioid-Related Toxicity Among Texas Medicare Part D Beneficiaries.The Journal of pharmacy technology : jPT : official publication of the Association of Pharmacy Technicians · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issuedCorrection.2015
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesSuicide rates have widely been reported to peak in spring and summer. A frequent hypothesis is that increased sunlight exposure alters biological mechanisms. However, few attempts have been made to systematically untangle the putative suicidogenic risk of sunlight exposure from that of seasonality. We examined whether average hours of daily sunlight in a month confer additional risk over month of year when predicting monthly suicide rates.
designHistorical population-based ecological longitudinal study. SETTING AND
participantsWe used 3 longitudinal studies (n=31,060 suicides) with monthly suicide and meteorological data from Greece (1992-2001), Victoria, Australia (1990-1998) and Norway (1969-2009).
interventionWe used a negative binomial regression to observe (1) the association of month of year with suicides, adjusting for different sunlight exposures, and (2) the association of sunlight exposure with suicides, adjusting for month of year. We then investigated claims that suicides were associated with daily sunlight exposures, defined by us as 2550 sunlight exposure combinations corresponding to a 1-50 days exposure window with lags of 0-50 days.
resultsUsing monthly data, the association between month of year and suicides remained after adjusting for mean daily hours of sunlight and change in the mean daily hours of sunlight. Adjusted for month of year, the associations between sunlight exposure and suicides became non-significant and attenuated towards the null (the coefficient estimate for mean daily hours of sunlight decreased in absolute magnitude by 72%). The findings were consistent across all 3 cohorts, both when analysed separately and combined. When investigating daily sunlight exposures, we found no significant results after correcting for multiple testing.
conclusionsUsing monthly data, the robustness of our month of year effects, combined with the transient and modest nature of our sunlight effects, suggested that the association between sunlight exposure and suicide was a proxy for the association between seasonality and suicide.
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