The study of suicide patterns from a chronobiological approach

TORTELLO CAMILA; PLANO SANTIAGO; VIGO DANIEL

Buenos Aires

Congreso; XIX Reunión Nacional y VIII Encuentro Internacional de la Asociación Argentina de Ciencias del Comportamiento; 2023

Suicide is the deliberate act of taking one’s own life and is understood as a multifactorial phenomenon encompassing social, cultural, biological, and psychological variables. In recent years, it has become an increasingly prevalent issue, requiring the identification and description of at-risk populations in order to address this problem. One of the variables that have gained interest in the field of emotional dysregulation is the influence of biological rhythms on mental disorders. Chronobiology, the study of biological rhythms, has shown that disruptions in circadian rhythms can have significant effects on mental health. In this regard, the objective of this study is to analyze the presence of rhythmic patterns within suicides committed in Argentina between the years 2017 and 2020 from a chronobiological perspective. Using the suicide database published by the Sistema de Alerta Temprana (SAT), which consists of a sample of 13271 recorded acts, a descriptive analysis was conducted. Rhythms in the behavioral pattern of suicide were evaluated taking into account factors such as age, gender, circadian variation throughout the day, and seasonal variation across the months of the year. The suicide rate was modeled using the cosinor approach to fit a cosine curve to the data from the aforementioned database. Among the main results, daily rhythmic patterns were identified, demonstrating a prevalence of suicides in the afternoon (acrophase: 14,4), as well as a seasonal pattern characterized by an increase in cases at the beginning and end of the year (acropahse: 11,7). Studying suicide from a circadian perspective can provide a greater understanding of this phenomenon and help develop future interventions to prevent it.