Association of Weekly Suicide Rates with Temperature Anomalies in Two Different Climate Types

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

P. Grady Dixon²  Mark Sinyor⁴  Ayal Schaffer⁴  Anthony Levitt⁴  Christa R. Haney³  Kelsey N. Ellis⁶  Scott C. Sheridan¹  Kristie L. Ebi⁵ 

[1] Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Geosciences, Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS 67601, USA;Department of Geosciences, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA; E-Mail:;Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M4N 3M5, Canada; E-Mails:;id="af1-ijerph-11-11627">1Department of Geosciences, Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS 67601, U;Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: suicide;    climate;    meteorology;    Canada;    Mississippi;    temperature;    weather;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph111111627

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Annual suicide deaths outnumber the total deaths from homicide and war combined. Suicide is a complex behavioral endpoint, and a simple cause-and-effect model seems highly unlikely, but relationships with weather could yield important insight into the biopsychosocial mechanisms involved in suicide deaths. This study has been designed to test for a relationship between air temperature and suicide frequency that is consistent enough to offer some predictive abilities. Weekly suicide death totals and anomalies from Toronto, Ontario, Canada (1986–2009) and Jackson, Mississippi, USA (1980–2006) are analyzed for relationships by using temperature anomaly data and a distributed lag nonlinear model. For both analysis methods, anomalously cool weeks show low probabilities of experiencing high-end suicide totals while warmer weeks are more likely to experience high-end suicide totals. This result is consistent for Toronto and Jackson. Weekly suicide totals demonstrate a sufficient association with temperature anomalies to allow some prediction of weeks with or without increased suicide frequency. While this finding alone is unlikely to have immediate clinical implications, these results are an important step toward clarifying the biopsychosocial mechanisms of suicidal behavior through a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between temperature and suicide.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.