Seasonal Variation in the Occurrence of Homicide in Finland

Jari Tiihonen · Pirkko K. Räsänen · Helinä H Hakko

214 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Journal of Psychiatry

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse Suicide and Self-Harm Studies Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Although seasonal variation in impulsive aggression related to circannual rhythms of central serotonin neurotransmission is a topic of current interest, there is little firm knowledge on seasonality in the occurrence of homicide. Longitudinal studies on the seasonal rhythms of platelet imipramine binding and L-tryptophan levels have placed the circannual peaks around January and February and the nadirs around May and August. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the number of homicides is the lowest during winter and the highest during spring and summer. A secondary hypothesis was that the seasonal variations in homicides and violent suicides are correlated. METHOD: The largest database on the monthly occurrence of homicide thus far (N = 4,553) was used in this study, in which the monthly occurrence of all murders and manslaughters in Finland during the years 1957-1995 was analyzed. RESULTS: During winter the homicide rate was 6% below the expected rate. Correspondingly, during summer there was a 6% elevation above the expected homicide rate, but no significant peak was observed in spring. There was a significant association between the monthly occurrence of homicides and violent suicides but not between homicides and nonviolent suicides. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that a seasonal variation in the occurrence of homicide exists. On the basis of current literature, it could be hypothesized that this seasonal variation and the correlation between the monthly occurrence of homicides and violent suicides are associated with the observed circannual rhythms of serotonin transmission.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 214 citations exist upstream.

References

1983Low cerebrospinal fluid 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid concentration differentiates impulsive from nonimpulsive violent behavior 1994CSF Biochemistries, Glucose Metabolism, and Diurnal Activity Rhythms in Alcoholic, Violent Offenders, Fire Setters, and Healthy Volunteers 1996Mental Disorders and Homicidal Behavior in Finland 1993Seasonality in violent suicide but not in nonviolent suicide or homicide 1996Impulsive Aggression in Personality Disorder Correlates With Tritiated Paroxetine Binding in the Platelet 1983Sexual violence in the United States and the role of season

Cited by

2017The Association of Ambient Temperature and Violent Crime 2000Relation of serum cholesterol, lipid, serotonin and tryptophan levels to severity of depression and to suicide attempts.2013Determination of the social related factors of suicide in Iran: a systematic review and meta-analysis 2008The association between psychiatric diagnosis and violent re-offending in adult offenders in the community 2008Risk of Violence by Psychiatric Patients: Beyond the "Actuarial Versus Clinical" Assessment Debate 2007Striatal dopamine D2 receptor availability in OCD with and without comorbid social anxiety disorder: preliminary findings

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.