On Dec. 22, 2005, just three days before Christmas, Indianapolis Colts football head coach Tony Dungy’s 18-year-old son committed suicide.

The suicide spawned many newspaper articles citing an increase in suicides between Thanksgiving and New Years.

According to mental health experts, however, studies have shown this increase simply doesn’t exist.

Contrary to urban myth, suicides do not increase during the winter holidays, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Suicides are in fact at their highest in the spring months.

‘The effect of the holidays is actually a drop in suicides,’ said David Phillips, professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, who conducted the first study to counteract the popular myth.

Despite Phillips’ work conducted almost 20 years ago and many other studies, which have since reaffirmed his findings, the press and entertainment media continue to perpetuate the myth, said Dan Romer, director of the Adolescent Risk Communication Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.

Syracuse University Counseling Center Assistant Director Susan Pasco said the real risks for suicide are depression and mental sickness, not the holiday season.

‘One of the things that is really important to know at SU is we do have services and resources available to students … both routine services as well as on-call services to deal with emergencies,’ she said.

Pasco said she has, however, heard the myth as well as seen news articles about it.

‘It seems like an interesting lead-in for a story, but there is no evidence to support it,’ she said.

Since 2001, Romer and colleagues at the Annenberg Public Policy Center have conducted an annual study analyzing the media’s reporting on suicides during the holidays.

The publicized suicide of James Dungy led to more stories than usual in the past year, Romer said.

‘Usually there are between 60 and 80 stories,’ he said. ‘Now, there are over 100.’

Newspapers and magazines are not the only offenders of perpetuating the myth, Romer said. Movies and television shows also spread the fiction.

For example, in the classic 1946 holiday film, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ main character George Bailey contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve.

The origins of the myth are not definite, Romer said, but it continues to spread through word of mouth as well as newspaper and magazine editors who encourage reporters to do stories on the ‘holiday blues.’

It may have started when people noticed a slight increase in suicides after Christmas, but did not take the large decrease directly before the holiday into account, Phillips said.

Regardless of its origins, it is important the media stop making false connections, which is why the Annenberg Public Policy Center has done the study, Romer said.

‘You don’t want to tell people that this is the time of year to kill yourself,’ he said. ‘They shouldn’t be hearing about suicide. They should be hearing about how to treat depression.’

Published on November 28, 2006 at 12:00 pm