Vitamin D: a potential role in reducing suicide risk?

Int J Adolesc Med Health. 2011;23(3):157-65.
Tariq MM, Streeten EA, Smith HA, Sleemi A, Khabazghazvini B, Vaswani D, Postolache TT.
Mood and Anxiety Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.

Suicide attempts are known to peak in the spring, overlapping with the time of year when 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels are at their nadir in the northern hemisphere because of negligible skin production of vitamin D owing to low levels of ultraviolet B radiation.

Low levels of 25(OH)D, the vitamin D metabolite used to diagnose vitamin D deficiency, have been associated with certain pro-suicidal factors such as

• exacerbation of depression,
• anxiety,
• psychosis, and
• certain medical conditions.

Therefore, we hypothesize that vitamin D deficiency could also be associated with increased risk of completed suicides.
Here, we briefly review the literature on vitamin D, its deficiency, and its reported association with certain risk factors for suicide.

PMID: 22191178

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Studies such at This have been finding that the seasonality is going away in recent decades.
This may be similar to the difference of MS with latitude going away in the past 40 years
- - – due to air conditioning and ability to stay out of the sun in the Southern part of the US.
Note: saying that the seasonality of suicides is going away is not saying that they are decreasing.
Perhaps now that many people are vitamin D deficient most of the year the there is no longer a “low vitamin D season” = suicide season.

15 of the 33 reasons for vitamin D deficiency are new in the past 40 years

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A previous study

Diversity and change in suicide seasonality over 125 years – Switzerland 2005

PDF is attached at the bottom of this page

The graph shows that seasonality has gone away (notice that the graph is normalized)

The table shows the actual annual numbers - which have greatly increased during the period that vitamin D has decreased

Probably just due to increase in population - as these are apparently absolute numbers, not rates per 100,000 population

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See also VitaminDWiki

• All items in category Winter Blues and Depression 268 items
  • UV does help reduce winter blues for some people
  • Bright light which does not contain and UV does reduce Winter Blues for most people
• Suicide associated with low vitamin D - many studies
• Mood disorders 11X worse for older adults with low vitamin D – 2006
• SAD rate 10X higher in cloudy Seattle than sunny Florida - April 2011
• Less than 20 ng vitamin D increases depression by 80 percent – Dec 2010
• Depression in UAE peaks in the summer – probably due to sun avoidance – Feb 2011
  • Wonder if suicide rate also peaks in the summer in UAE
• Prisoners have very low vitamin D and get TB, influenza, and depression
  • includes another item "Suicide rate 9X higher for females in prison that outside"
• Acne ==> use more vitamin A ==> reduces Vitamin D ==> increase suicide