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updated 7/8/2009 8:26:26 AM ET
Deadliest day for suicides: Wednesday
By Linda Carroll
msnbc.com contributor
If you listen to popular songs, you might conclude
there’s no day as depressing as a Monday. But a new
study shows that lyricists may have gotten it all wrong
and that Wednesday is really the darkest day of the
week.
The study, published in Social Psychiatry and
Psychiatric Epidemiology, found that people are far more
likely to kill themselves in the middle of the week than in
the beginning or the end: almost 25 percent of suicides
occur on Wednesdays as compared to 14 percent on
Mondays or Saturdays, the two days tied for secondhighest suicide rates. The study also found if you make
it through Wednesday, your risk for suicide plummets by
more than half the following day; Thursdays have the
lowest rate, with only 11 percent of suicides.
Research up until now has pointed a finger at Mondays,
said the new report’s lead author, Augustine J.
Kposowa, a professor of sociology at the University of
California, Riverside. “Everyone talks about the Monday
blues,” Kposowa added. “But if you look at more recent
data, it looks like things have shifted and now it’s the
middle of the week that’s the problem.”
More study is needed to fully understand the findings,
but researchers suspect that we may be seeing a
positive impact of technology on suicide and
depression. With the advent of e-mail, Internet
discussion groups and text messaging, people can now
stay in touch with the outside world even if they are
holed up by themselves at home the entire weekend.
As for the spike in suicides in the middle of the week,
Kposowa suggested that the increase may indicate job
stress. “People may be fed up and stressed by their jobs
by the middle of the week,” he said. “By Wednesday, the
traffic has gotten to be too much, their co-workers are
getting on their nerves and they can’t figure out how
they’re going to make it to the end of the week.”
Why Wednesdays?
Kposowa and his co-author examined data on deaths in
people over the age of 18 for five years — 2000 through
2004 — from all 50 states. On average, the researchers
found that there were about 30,000 suicides per year in
this group. The researchers detected another interesting
change in the suicide data. Contrary to earlier studies
that showed an increased rate of suicides in winter and
spring, the new data showed almost no seasonal effect
on suicide rates. Slightly more occurred in the summer
— 26 percent — while the fewest occurred in the winter,
at 23.8 percent.
Kposowa again looks to the nation’s higher
connectedness — through the Internet and cell phones
— to explain the lack of a seasonal effect. Winter just
doesn’t isolate people as much as it used to, he said.
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