School shootings
I was thinking about school shootings today. Has anyone else noticed how there seem to be a disproportionate number of mass shootings in March/April?
My mother is bipolar, and during the 15 years she was on Lithium, she most often had psychotic/manic episodes in September. When we realized there was a definite pattern, we discovered seasonal affective disorder. The changing of the seasons from winter to spring can trigger mania (and accompanying psychosis) in people prone to it.
Of course, spring comes in March and April in the Northern Hemisphere. Here's a list of school shootings. I looked at the last ten years of data, from 1998 to 2007. I removed one incident which was not in the Northern Hemisphere (Argentina). I removed an couple of incidents which were accidental. The list also includes foiled plots that didn't materialize into actual shootings.
63 incidents. 27 were in March and April. Maybe there's not enough data, but that seems to be 42% of the incidents in only 16.6% of the time.
Incidentally, the Argentinian incident was in September.
My mother is bipolar, and during the 15 years she was on Lithium, she most often had psychotic/manic episodes in September. When we realized there was a definite pattern, we discovered seasonal affective disorder. The changing of the seasons from winter to spring can trigger mania (and accompanying psychosis) in people prone to it.
Of course, spring comes in March and April in the Northern Hemisphere. Here's a list of school shootings. I looked at the last ten years of data, from 1998 to 2007. I removed one incident which was not in the Northern Hemisphere (Argentina). I removed an couple of incidents which were accidental. The list also includes foiled plots that didn't materialize into actual shootings.
63 incidents. 27 were in March and April. Maybe there's not enough data, but that seems to be 42% of the incidents in only 16.6% of the time.
Incidentally, the Argentinian incident was in September.
Labels: psychobabble
posted by Mormolyke at
15:00
2 Comments:
Interesting thought on the season, and possibly very vaild.
Let me throw two other variables at you though-
1. From what we've seen it seems a number of these shooters feel persecuted (bullied) by their peers (and probably were- but I'm assuming too much here). If this is the case, these are all occuring towards then end of the school year. The situations (real or imagened) that have built to the shootings have had the entire school year to build and not get resolved.
2. Columbine falls in the second year of your cross section. There also seems to possibly be an aniversary effect with some of these people- which of course would draw them to april.
You've researched your points far more carefully than I've researched mine. Go ahead and point out what I'm missing.
For some reason, most upheaval in my life has ALWAYS occurred between February and April - when we hit spring in Florida. I always assumed there was really some form of "spring madness," and didn't think too much on it. Most of my family members seem to have a very mild form of SAD, but we've never really talked about the manic aspect of it; we can tell when the days begin to get shorter in July, though, especially further north. Yet another reason why I enjoy living in Florida.
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