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Re: What is this connection

From: Judy Kuster
Date: 20 Oct 2008
Time: 07:26:30 -0500
Remote Name: 76.17.183.48

Comments

Salad! Nice to see you active in the online conference again this year! Regarding your interesting question, and apparently your personal experience, I can find no research regarding phases/cycles of the moon and stuttering, but there has been research about phases/cycles of the moon and psychiatric problems. A couple of example -- Owen et. al's article 'Lunar cycles and violent behaviour" (2002) Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 32, issue 4, pp 496-499 concludes that there is "no signifiant relationship" found between "total violences and aggression or level of violence and aggression and any phase of the moon." A similar conclusion was reached by Lester in Temporal Variation in Suicide and Homicide, American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 109, No. 5: 517-520 which concluded that there was no lunar variation found on homocide or suicide. However, I did find an interesting article by Raison, The moon and madness reconsidered, Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 53, Issue 1, pp 99-106 that suggests where that idea may have come from. It suggests that it originated with problems associated with sleep deprevation. And many people report increased disfluency when they are tired, even those who are not people who stutter. The abstract states "Belief that the full moon is associated with psychiatric disturbance persists despite 50 years research showing no association. This article traces the historical roots of belief in the power of the moon to cause disorders the mind, especially insanity and epilepsy. Putative mechanisms of lunar action are critiqued. It is proposed that modern findings showing lack of lunar effect can be reconciled with pre-modern beliefs in the moon’s power through a mechanism of sleep deprivation. Prior to the advent of modern lighting the moon was a significant source of nocturnal illumination that affected sleep–wake cycle, tending to cause sleep deprivation around the time of full moon. This partial sleep deprivation would have been sufficient to induce mania/hypomania in susceptible bipolar patients and seizures in patients with seizure disorders. The advent of modern lighting attenuated this lunar effect, especially in modern urban areas, where most 20th century studies of lunar effects on the mind have been conducted. The hypothesis presented in this article is open to empirical validation or falsification. Potential tests for the sleep-deprivation hypothesis of lunar action are discussed." This idea however does not match your personal experience of being more fluent when the moon is full. I wonder if anyone else ever reports this experience. Do people in your self-help organization in Kenya have the same experience?


Last changed: 10/20/08