Impact of meteorological factors and psychiatric disorders : a French exploratory study.

Abstract

Introduction : The objective of our work was to study the link between meteorological factors (temperature, sunshine duration, rain, wind, humidity) and psychiatric disorders. For this purpose, we conducted two exploratory studies in France : the first one, studying the link between the weather and suicidal behaviors (suicides and suicide attempts); the other one between alcohol use disorders (AUD) and the weather. Methods : We analyzed the number of deaths by suicide and suicide attempts in metropolitan France (2009-2018) from French national hospitalization databases; patients who were admitted to an emergency department for an alcohol related condition were included using the Oscour database, and we used meteorological database from national weather services. Based on this model, we determined the association of suicides and suicide attempts with weather factors, and then between AUD and meteorological factors. Results: The number of suicides and suicide attempts decreased over the last ten years in France (mean decrease of 14.49% and 11.69% per year). We observed a significant and recurrent seasonal pattern of suicides and suicide attempts in France, with a peak in spring. The suicide and suicide attempt rates were higher in the northern departments of France. We found significant positive correlations between the number of alcohol-related ED visits and the mean temperature (r = 0.55; p = 1.87e) and the duration of sunlight (r = 0.42; p = .0015). Negative correlations were also found significant with rain (r = −0.40; p = .0014), humidity (r = –0.41; p = .0023) and wind speed (r = −0.40; p = .0031).  Conclusion: The number of suicides and suicide attempts decreased in France over the last 10 years, with large and recurrent seasonal variations. Emergency visits for AUD seem to increase with the temperature and duration of sunlight, and decrease with rain, humidity and wind speed.