With
Spring well under way, at least by the calendar if not by the weather, many of
us are beginning to feel more optimistic. It is a classic time for young
people to get married too.
There
are consequences to young people turning towards thoughts of love and there is
a good chance that we’ll start to see these next January. We know from
Gladwell’s study that January is a good month to be born if you plan to be a
professional hockey or soccer player (1). But apparently there is a downside.
There
has been a murmuring around the psychiatric fraternity that it is a bad month
to make your entrance as you may be more prone to psychiatric problems like
schizophrenia. Disanto et al have
gone after this with a large study of almost 60k patients and 30k controls in
the UK database (2).
The
results quoted are that January is a poor choice for your birthday if you wish
to avoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. July through September are rather
better choices. May appears to be slightly iffy for a propensity for recurrent
depression with November being the best choice.
The
seasonal nature leads the authors towards the suggestion that vitamin D or lack
thereof might have something to do with it, although, as the data is from
England, big seasonal differences in sunshine would seem to be a little tenuous
as an explanation, but I may be taking an overly gloomy view.
Before
we all get too bent out of shape though, I should point out that the peak to
trough differences are about 17% with a uncertainty of ±5%, which isn’t going
to give anybody a free pass if they target the best birthday month for their
future offspring.
- http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html
- http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034866t
