Spring a Painful Season for Some

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory with desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain. " T.S. Eliot

British poet T.S, Eliot began 1922's The Waste Land with a curious contradiction noticed by today's psychologists: spring, which is supposed to be a happy time, isn't fun for some people. In fact, statistics show April and May are the most common months for suicide, both nationally and in Alaska.

Why do so many deaths by suicide occur in a season of sunshine and rebirth? One theory offered by Howard Gabennesch, a psychologist with the University of Southern Indiana, is that spring is a time of unfulfilled promise. A severely depressed, suicidal person may be negatively affected by spring because it's a time most people associate with new beginnings.

A despondent person's hopes of feeling better might be heightened with the new season, Gabennesch wrote in the journal Social Forces. The problem occurs when, despite the new season, nothing changes in the seriously depressed person's life. It seems a promise has been broken. The despondent person sinks further into hopelessness, falling below his or her "suicide threshold." The next step downward is for the person to take his or her own life.

Like spring, weekends and holidays have a potential to deliver much more happiness than they often do. This may be a reason behind other nationwide statistics cited in Gabennesch's article: Monday is the day of the week when most suicides occur, and suicides are much more common the first few days after a major U.S. holiday than they are in the days immediately before the holiday.

Another possible reason suicide rates go up in spring was offered by Norm Dinges, a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Dinges said springtime may actually give a suicidal person enough energy to commit the act--energy that wasn't available during the dark, cold months of winter when people spend more time keeping themselves warm and coaxing cold cars to life.

"In spring, a person's depression may go into partial remission, but it's still strong," Dinges said. "One of the greatest danger times is when people are improving. That's when they may have the energy to act out a dormant suicide plan."

The rate of suicides nationally takes a nose-dive in December, and Alaska again follows the national trend, according to Angle Richardson, crisis services administrator at the Fairbanks Crisis Line. She said the suicide rate peaks in October, but it still isn't quite as extreme as it is in springtime.

Many Alaskans have been affected by the suicide of a friend or family member. Judith Kleinfeld, a psychologist and head of the Northern Studies program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said that before she lectures to classes about suicide, she always allows students a chance to skip the session because it might trigger painful memories. Kleinfeld said two or three students out of 60 always opt not to attend the lecture.

Richardson said a suicidal person will often drop hints such as saying nobody cares and that things don't matter anyway because he or she won't be here long. She said the best strategy when talking to a suicidal person is to listen and to ask directly if the person is thinking of committing suicide. She said many people sometimes make the mistake of not asking that question for fear of making the person angry. "He'll get over being mad," she said. "He won't get over being dead."