The undying holiday-suicide myth

The holiday-suicide myth, the false claim that the suicide rate rises during the year-end holiday season, persisted in some news coverage through the 2021-22 holidays, according to U.S. media data collected and analyzed by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC). In fact, although the U.S. suicide rate increased in 2021 after two years of declines, the average daily suicide rate during the holiday months remained among the lower rates of the year. APPC’s media analysis, which is based on newspaper stories published over the 2021-22 holiday season, found that a little more than half of the stories that directly discussed the holidays and the suicide rate supported the false myth, while the remainder debunked it.