Dead Again?
You know all those legions of people supposedly killing themselves at Christmas time? Well, it seems they're mostly still alive and kicking. It turns out the holiday-suicide link is a myth, perpetuated by newspapers. Excuse me for not linking to a few of the stories, but I'm with Gregg at the Courmayeur "Noir In Festival," in the Italian alps (I know, boohoo), where Elmore Leonard is getting the Raymond Chandler Award...and I'm lucky just to have a keyboard, let alone figure out where the fucking apostrophe is. I just wrote an email to somebody without a single contraction, sounding like I spoke Chinese as my first language, I'm sure.

Anyway, this press release about an interesting study by researcher Dan Romer, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Adolescent Risk Communication Institute, came at an opportune time, so it'll be tomorrow's blog item...unless I can find a single Wifi access point in town where I can get on the net on my own little iBook...and get off the technological hammer and chisel that is the Italian dialup access point, the weird keyboard, and the aging PC.

Here's an excerpt from the press release about Romer's study:

Despite no basis in fact, newspapers continue to report on the increased risk of suicide around the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays. An analysis of newspaper reporting over the past seven years released today by the Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that this story represents about half of all holiday-relevant suicide reporting.

Stories linking suicides and the holidays during the 2005-2006 end-of-year season represented about 57 percent of the articles written, a statistically insignificant change from the 2004-2005 holiday period. The rest of the stories debunked the myth.

As noted in previous studies, the rate of suicide in the U.S. is lowest in December, and peaks in the spring and fall. Data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics show that this pattern has not changed through 2003, the most recent year for which national data are available.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has been tracking holiday suicide reporting since 2000 when it released its first press alert on newspaper coverage of the myth.

The percentage of stories debunking the holiday-suicide myth has more than doubled since the Center began its survey. In the 1999-2000 holiday period, only about 23 percent of the stories that made a link between the holidays and suicide debunked the myth. In the 2004-05 holiday period, about 43 percent of the stories noted that the association is untrue. Nevertheless, the rate of reporting the myth has not changed since the first jump in accurate reporting during the 2000-01 holiday period.

“We are heartened to see the press debunking the myth,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “But there is still a lot of coverage that keeps the story alive.”

The new results for last year include an unusually high number of stories that merely noted that a suicide had occurred during a holiday (a coincidental association). This was mainly attributable to the heavy reporting of the suicide death of James Dungy, son of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, around Thanksgiving. The unusually high number of stories about the link in the 1999-2000 period was attributable in part to the coming change in the millennium, which spurred considerable speculation about its effects on suicide.

Perpetuating the myth not only misinforms readers, but it also misses an opportunity to educate the public about the most likely source of suicide risk, mental illness, according to Dan Romer, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Adolescent Risk Communication Institute, and lead researcher for this study. Persons suffering from major depression and other treatable mental conditions are at increased risk of suicide and getting help from an appropriate health professional can reduce symptoms and prevent suicide. The press can help those suffering from these conditions to seek help before it’s too late.