The study, published in BMC Psychiatry , suggests there is a clear variation in behaviour throughout the week and throughout the day and researchers say targeted support to those at risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviours can be made more readily available.
She added, “If developed in the right way, we might have the capacity to target otherwise unreachable populations to deliver suicide prevention messaging and interventions where and when they are needed most.”
The researchers looked at the timings at which users of the Reddit forum “SuicideWatch” posted online. The forum is a moderated online community for individuals who are either at risk of, or know someone who is at risk of suicide.
The data, which was taken between 1st December 2008 and 31st August 2015, amounted to 90,518 posts. Over the course of a given week, posts to the forum were at their highest on Mondays between 02:00 and 05:00 in the morning. Posts trended downwards from Tuesday to Saturday. This was in stark contrast to data taken from the control group “AskReddit”, a separate forum on the same site in which users can ask general questions of each other, which saw most content posted in the later hours of the day.
The timings of the posts suggest that active users are experiencing disturbances to their sleep, and may represent a potentially modifiable risk factor for suicidal thoughts and behaviours. In addition, the early morning peak in SuicideWatch posts precedes the time of day during which suicide attempts and deaths most commonly occur.
Yoshikki on May 24th, 2021 at 14:21 UTC »
In my early days of working in Japan, on my first business trip where I had to take a train in the morning, my co-workers warned me to leave earlier than I needed to because it was a Monday, because train delays caused by people jumping on the tracks are more common on Mondays. While I've never witnessed an incident myself, I've had multiple times where my train was delayed by a suicide, and I don't even commute by train. It's a pretty regular occurrence here
notanolive on May 24th, 2021 at 13:39 UTC »
I mean this makes sense, it’s the end of the weekend, Sunday night/Monday morning. I thought this was a known thing that it can be the toughest time especially for those experiencing mental health issues.
Waebi on May 24th, 2021 at 10:08 UTC »
Attempted and thus completed suicides are also higher on Mondays: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/aug/26/health.medicineandhealth1 or as a more recent study from Korea: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29349806/