Full moon has 'werewolf effect'

[glenc]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/983027/full-moon-has-werewolf-effect-study
A study in an Australian hospital has identified a spike in out-of-control "werewolf" patients when a full moon is out.
There were 91 emergency patients rated as having violent and acute behavioural disturbance at the Calvary Mater Newcastle hospital from August 2008 to July 2009.
Leonie Calver, a clinical research nurse in toxicology, said almost a quarter of the cases (23 per cent) occurred on a night of full moon and this was double the number for other lunar phases. The patients all had to be sedated and physically restrained to protect themselves and others...

[renormalised]

Hmmmmmm:screwy::screwy:

[Liz]

There may be some truth there somewhere, somehow.
Its pretty well known in the medical profession that patients go 'off' when theres a Full Moon. :tasdevil:
Been in that position tons of times .... lucky the nurses are sane :scared2::scared2::ship1:

[supernova1965]

You should see my wife on a full moon she is a self confessed Werewolf she cant sleep all the curtains and blinds have to be shut and still she acts weird all this is what Pam has said about herself. Its really quite frightning

[Kevnool]

Its time to go watch twilight everyone.
Cheers Kev.

[spearo]

Interesting,
When that's been discussed before amongst professionals, it usually references other research which shows no correlation whatsoever. In fact I think the coinciding of weekends with behavioral "spikes" was more relevant.

Even more interesting is the "finding" that 23 % occurred on one of the 4 main phases of the Moon....
4 phases ... 23 %....... one quarter...see where I'm going with this?

I wont be rushing out to buy silver bullets just yet

frank

[stephenb]

Frank, might I suggest you have not either:

(a) worked in the emergency/triage of a major hospital;
(b) worked at a Triple-0 communciations centre;
(c) or been actively involved as an emercengy service worker on the road, whether that be Police, Ambulance, CAT (Crisis Assessment Team)?

As an emergency service worker in Melbourne, I can catagorically state that when we approach a full Moon (normally 3-4 days either side of a full Moon), there is a sharp increase of workload, including domestic violence, psychiatic patients arming themselves (involuntary and voluntary, serious assaults, etc. many involving more than once service per incident.

It is fact, it occurs like clockwork, the data is there and the only common factor every month, is the full Moon. Many people dismiss this, but I myself see it first-hand in the jobs coming through, and I know that there are other IIS members who are in similar fields, who experience that same.

[starlooker]

Very interesting.

[Clarry]

You do realise the term LUNATIC came about because of the increased irrational behavior during a full moon.

[spearo]

Stephen/,glenluceskies
You make strong assertions. Unfortunately,

I have worked as an "on call" for psychiatric emergencies in hospital, (that's a)) including intake triage for psychiatric emergencies (Thats b)) and been very very involved in crisis assessment team operations thats c)).

I also have experience in research (couple of theses, Master of Sciences degree, Advances statistical analysis, etc.)

I wasn't going to mention any of this but your post seemed to posit that because you have the experience you have it makes you an authority on the subject and endorses the research as reported dismissing the validity of my comments.

While everyone should feel free to believe whatever they want if it helps them through the day, including the Moon affecting human behaviour that's fine.

I only replied to the post because it seems to me very poor science and potentially influential.

However the reported research appears rather poor and the reporting of it even worse. Including the statistical analysis. They don't report the hypothesis, testing, results (only this weird 23% which was double the others...no self respecting researcher would accept reporting data like this.)

The premise if about as causally sound as "the Moon affects the tides so it must affect humans, interest rates, global warming, etc...) what is the causal factor?

Think about it:

In research, you'd try to disprove the null hypothesis which is to say there is no difference in human activity/madness between Moon phases so whatever the researched variable (and you'd want to factor analyze for Thursday pay days, weekends, etc which CAN correlate with human activity - have money will party)
i digress.

The Null Hypohesis would start off saying there is no difference between the 4 phases so what ever you are measuring will occur the same across hence 25% in each moon phase.

if the study shows something occurred 23 % in one phase
that's just basic chance.

If its double what happened elsewhere in another phase (call it 12% in another phase), then the rest of the occurrences must be packed in one of the remaining two phases... (at least 65% is split between two phases)

That implies, logically, that one of the other phases has way more than 23% off the occurrence.

I suppose Melbourne could be different. However, given that you obviously work within the environment and these events occur as "clockwork" i suggest you too can prove the predictable workloads: ask your nurse manager or quality improvement staff to show you you the incident reports (which are reported for all violent hospitals in hospitals) and correlate it yourself with moon phases.

Frank

[gmbfilter]

Probably just some poor loonies that don't have their own website to keep busy when they can't observe!

[multiweb]

The full moon does have a "werewolf effect" on angry astro photographers usually cursing with their fist in the air, howling "scientific terms". :scared:

[WarpSpider74]

It is never, EVER, under any circumstances, time to watch Twilight.