Along withMercury in retrograde , a fullmoonis a reasonably popularscapegoatfor bad fortune and freakish behavior . Encounter someone roleplay strangely ? Blame it on the lunar phases .
It ’s often been reported thatcrime ratesincrease and emergency rooms are much in use during the full moon ( though a 2004studydebunked this latter claim ) . Plus , there ’s that wholewerewolfthing . Why would this be ? The abstract thought is that the lunar month , which affects the sea ’s tides , believably wield a similar effect on us , because the humanbodyis made mostly of water .
This belief that themooninfluences behavior is so widely hold — reportedly , even 80 percent of nursemaid and 64 percent of doctors cogitate it ’s true , according to a 1987paperpublished in theJournal of Emergency Medicine — that in 2012 a squad of researchers at Université Laval ’s School of Psychology in Canada decided to find out if genial sickness and the phases of the lunation are join [ PDF ] .
To test the theory , the researcher assess 771 affected role who visit emergency rooms at two hospital in Montreal between March 2005 and April 2008 . The patients chosen complained of chest of drawers pains , though doctors could not determine a medical cause for the pain in the neck . Many of the patient role suffered frompanic attacks , anxiety and humour disorders , or suicidal thoughts .
When the researchers compared the time of the visit to the phase of the moon , they found that there was no link between the incidence of psychological problems and the four lunar stage , with one exclusion : in the last lunar fourth part , anxiety disorders were 32 percentlessfrequent . “ This may be coinciding or due to factors we did not take into account , ” Dr. Geneviève Belleville , who guide the team of investigator , said . “ But one thing is sure : we observed no full - synodic month or new - moonshine impression on psychological problems . ”
So rest soft ( or maybe not ): If people seem to behave weird during the fullmoon , their behavior is probably pretty like during the rest of the lunar cycle as well .
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A version of this story run in 2019 ; it has been updated for 2024 .
