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Background.Seasonal as well as weekly cycles in suicide have been described, replicated and poorly understood for a long time. In Western countries, suicides are typically least frequent on weekends and most frequent on Mondays and Tuesdays. To improve understanding of this phenomenon a strategy is required which focuses on anomalous findings beyond the regular patterns. Here, we focused on instances where the weekly suicide patterns disappear or are interrupted.Methods.We used data from Swiss and Austrian mortality statistics for the periods 1969–2010 and 1970–2010, respectively. First, the data were cross-tabulated by days of the week and the available socio-demographic information (sex, age, religious affiliation and region). Second, time series of cumulated daily frequencies of suicide were analysed by seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models which included intervention effects accounting for Easter and Pentecost (Whit) holidays.Results.First, the cross tabulations showed that weekly cycles may be smoothed above all in young persons and smoothed in drowning, jumping and car gas exhaustion suicides. Second, the ARIMA analyses displayed occasional preventive effects for holidays Saturdays and Sundays, and more systematic effects for holiday Mondays. There were no after effects on Tuesdays following holiday Mondays.Conclusions.In general, the weekend dip and the Monday backlog effect in suicide show striking similarities to the Advent season effect and are interpretable within the same template. The turning points between low and high frequencies possibly provide promising frames for the timing of prevention activities.

Background:Suicide rates among police officers may be high because of strong occupational stressors. Aims:This study examined the suicide rate and suicide characteristics among police officers in the Federal Austrian Police Force. Methods:All suicides among policemen during the period 1996–2006 were analyzed retrospectively on the basis of personalized police record files from all Austrian police departments. Information on sex, age, marital status, children, region, method and place of suicide, suicide notes, position, and length of service was extracted from these files. The general Austrian population, adjusted for sex and age composition, served as the comparison group. Results:The suicide rate among male police officers was 30.2/100,000 (SD11.0), which was comparable to the suicide rate in the adjusted general population (30.5/100,000; SD2.9). The female police officer suicide rate was 1.8/100,000, while the corresponding suicide rate of the adjusted female general population was 12.5/100,000 (SD1.7). Firearms were the most frequent suicide method (77.8%), and the incidence of suicide notes was 30.8%. Conclusions:Suicide rates among police officers seem comparable to those of the age-adjusted general population. Given the healthy-worker effect, these results still suggest an increased risk of suicide among police officers. These findings should stimulate further research on stressors and risk factors for suicide among officers and should also encourage departments to increase awareness regarding suicidal signs among officers.