Suicides peak on New Year’s Day and Mondays, global analysis shows

While New Year’s Day was a high-risk day across the world, the findings were less consistent about Christmas.

People are more likely to die by suicide on Monday than any other day of the week, and risk increased on New Year’s Day as well, according to a global analysis of suicides over nearly four decades.
While suicide risks peaked on Mondays across all countries, there were also regional differences around the globe, according to the study, which was published in the medical journal BMJ and analysed 1.7 million suicides across 26 countries between 1971 and 2019.
Many North American, Asian, and European countries saw fewer suicides on weekends, but the weekend suicide risk increased in South and Central American countries, Finland, and South Africa.
The European countries included in the study are the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
It’s not clear exactly what’s driving these trends. But the study authors said that increased work pressure at the beginning of the week, alcohol drinking over the weekend, and social isolation around the holidays – particularly for men – could play a role.
The elevated risk on New Year’s could be due in part to the fear or anxiety that sometimes accompanies a hangover, Brian O’Shea, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Nottingham in the UK who studies seasonal trends in suicidality but was not involved with the new study, told Euronews Health.
“Probably the most logical thing is people drink way more than they normally would on New Year’s, and if you’re already dealing with some emotional stress, and having to also deal with the physiological withdrawals from alcohol, that can compound together and potentially push you over the edge,” O’Shea said.
Those risks could be particularly serious for men, who tend to drink more and have weaker social networks than women, he added.
Notably, there were no global conclusions for Christmas Day. Suicides typically increased on Christmas in Central and South American countries as well as South Africa, and fell in North American and European countries.
The level of risk on New Year’s Day also depended on the country, with that association being weakest in Japan and strongest in Chile.
The researchers also examined the effect of the Lunar New Year’s Day for China, South Korea, and Taiwan, and found that suicide risk only fell in South Korea on that date.
Suicides generally fell slightly on other national holidays – though they sometimes rose a day or two later.
Study authors said stronger family and social ties could help explain the lower suicide risk around the holidays, but that more studies are needed because suicide rates differ so much among the countries.
Factors like alcohol, isolation, and work stress could also be more or less important in a particular country based on religious beliefs, timing of major holidays, and expectations around work-life balance, according to Martin Plöderl, a clinical psychologist and suicide prevention researcher at Paracelsus Medical University in Austria who was not involved with the new study.
“We need to have a closer look at the socio-cultural factors that differ across the regions,” Plöderl told Euronews Health.
He previously identified similar trends in Austria, finding that suicide rates rise on Mondays, during the spring and summer, and after major holidays, and decrease on weekends and in December, falling to their lowest level on Christmas before peaking on New Year’s Day.
The new study is among the first to take a global perspective on the issue, Plöderl said.
Taken together, he said the weekday-level findings probably won’t have much relevance for mental health clinicians and suicide prevention programmes, but that understanding which holidays are higher risk for suicides could help them tailor their services.
“All efforts are put together to help people during Christmas, and for the New Year’s peak, there is no awareness,” he said.
“So this could really translate to clinical practice by, for example, delaying discharges after New Year’s, keeping in mind that this could be a risky period”.
Meanwhile, O’Shea said the results could help make the case for higher staffing levels for suicide prevention hotlines and other emergency resources around high-risk periods such as New Year’s Day.
“If we know this at an epidemiological or population level, it just means that we can put the resources in place – and maybe pay people more – to make sure they’re there to provide that support that people might need,” O’Shea said. “It could help reduce deaths”.
If you are contemplating suicide and need to talk, please reach out to Befrienders Worldwide, an international organisation with helplines in 32 countries. Visit befrienders.org to find the telephone number for your location.