Spring Suicides

Many residents of high latitude say that it isn't winter's cold that depresses them so much as it is the increase in hours of darkness as winter sets on. Since fall seems to be a somewhat depressing time for many, it is surprising that there are reports of more humans in the arctic regions attempting suicide in springtime rather than in fall. One would think that it should be the other way around: that the increasing light and warmth of springtime would give new hope to a person who is depressed, and that there should be fewer suicides than in other seasons.

A hint as to what might be the cause of the spring increase in suicide attempts is given by Thomas A. Wehr and other authors in an article in the November 9, 1979 issue of Science magazine. Their studies of depressed persons suggest that severely depressed persons may have their internal clocks out of kilter. Relative to their sleep-wake cycle, their other bodily rhythms are advanced. Tests involving the sudden advancing of a person's sleep-wake cycle to bring it more in line with the person's other circadian rhythms were found to pull the person out of depression.

Notice that rapid advance in the sleep-wake cycle is the same thing that happens in the jet-lag that a person undergoes when traveling eastward several time zones. If the air traveler is tending toward depression, perhaps the sudden advance may jar him out of the depression. The effect should not be associated with jet lag traveling westward since that retards a person's sleep-wake cycle.

The extreme seasonal change in the number of daylight hours at high latitude has the potential to modify a person's sleep-wake cycle and cause it to get out of phase with the person's other circadian cycles.

One may tend to go to sleep earlier in fall and thereby slowly advance his or her sleep-wake cycle. However in spring, people, at least those that are not required to adhere to fixed working cycles, may tend to go to bed later as the days grow longer. This tendency would allow the other circadian rhythms to be advanced relative to sleep-wake cycle, the situation that is suggested to be associated with depression.

If all this is true, a person tending toward depression might reverse the tendency simply by going to bed earlier.