Suicide: holidays' darkest myth

It was Christmas Eve when George Bailey stared into the black depths of the river beneath the bridge in Bedford Falls, convinced that the world would be better off without him. That scene from the 1946 movie classic "It's a Wonderful Life" could well have given birth to the media myth that Christmas is a trigger for increased suicides and episodes of depression.

It is a baseless notion, according to a body of published studies by statisticians who have examined hundreds of thousands of suicides in the United States and around the world. The number of suicides goes down, not up, over the holiday season, by as much as 40%.

During the season of good cheer, there are certainly those whose blue mood stands in stark contrast to the season's bright lights and festivities. But pointing to the Christmas season as a cause of increased depression and risk for suicide is just wrong, says Dan Romer, director of the Annenberg Adolescent Risk Communication Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.

"Holiday blues?" asks Dr. Eric Caine, co-director of the center for the study and prevention of suicide at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. "I'm not sure. I just know I get a lot fewer admissions [to the psychiatric ward] over the holidays."

In one of the most thorough examinations of what researchers call acts of deliberate self-harm, which can be an indication of depression, Helen Bergen, research scientist at the University of Oxford, found that Christmas, for most people, is protective.

Bergen and colleagues reached this conclusion after examining emergency room admission records of 19,346 people in England and looking at daily rates of self-induced injury from 1976 to 2003.

Drug or alcohol overdoses, self-poisoning with gas or other harmful substances and self-inflicted injuries-- with or without the deliberate intention to die -- all decreased from average levels during the week of Dec. 19-26, Bergen and colleagues found, and these lowered levels held through New Year's Day.

The decrease in rates of self-inflicted damage before, on and immediately after Christmas and into the New Year was found regardless of age, family connections or social isolation, the researchers reported in the September issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine.