[Views from Dordogne, and the moon, on suicide]

Death-rate by suicide in Dordogne, department of Aquitaine (France), remains above the national average: 25.4 for 100000 inhabitants in Dordogne per year between 1990 and 1993, against 20.4 in France between 1989 and 1991. They are mostly old peasants of the west and the north of the department, and rural people in their thirties, who kill themselves. But the frightful high rate of suicides registered from 1975 to 1985 (31.8 in Dordogne between 1980 and 1982, against 25.3 in France for the same period), and which hit mostly young adults and the population around the town of Nontron, appears reduced. These suicides express, under the pressure of contemporary upset of the occidental society, the old crisis of abandonment of the rural areas in crispation. The most fragile succumb- and not only in the Perigord. Moreover, the suicides are here more important in September and in January. The sociological explanation of G. Masterton (1991) is plausible. The rates of suicides are also studied according to the lunar months. In Dordogne, the maximum and minimum rates of suicides are situated every year in two consecutive lunar phases. Further, these values are scheduled from one year to another, alternatively in the ascending period of the moon and then, in the descending period. Lastly, mathematic analysis of the suicides registered in the whole of 4 similar french departments (stepped according their latitude), during 2 years (1991-1992) and at the time of the first 3 days of each lunar phase, reveals that their rate is significantly lower in Full Moon than in the First Quarter period; this is equally true in the department of Maine and Loire. Further, Ph. Brosseau had shown (1987) that the French dies less in Full Moon, and more in New Moon period. The Full Moon period seems to protect the fragile subjects against their own death.