Birthday Blues: The Association of Birthday With Self Inflicted Death in the Elderly

M. Alderson has shown an excess of deaths in the birth month & following 3 mo. for persons aged 75+ & suggests birthdays may affect elderly morale, impairing resistance to fatal disease, & that a hypothesis of “birthday stress” should be tested. It might be related to suicide more than to natural death; there is an obvious & direct link between psychological aspects of the stress & cause of death. The present authors, in a study of 282 suicides, observe a similar effect.