An intriguing, anecdotal finding was recently reported by some news outlets that the implementation of blue-colored streetlights has reduced both crime and suicides:
Glasgow, Scotland, introduced blue street lighting to improve the city’s landscape in 2000. Afterward, the number of crimes in areas illuminated in blue noticeably decreased.
The Nara, Japan, prefectural police set up blue street lights in the prefecture in 2005, and found the number of crimes decreased by about 9 percent in blue-illuminated neighborhoods. Many other areas nationwide have followed suit.
Keihin Electric Express Railway Co. changed the color of eight lights on the ends of platforms at Gumyoji Station in Yokohama, Japan, in February.
Since the railway company introduced the new blue lights, they’ve had no new suicide attempts.
This effect may be attributed to a few possible reasons (some of which are mentioned in the comments section of the article):
- The light color is new and unusual, causing people to act more cautiously in the area (as a person is unsure what to expect in the unusually-lit area).
- Blue is a light color almost universally associated with a police presence, suggesting it is an area of stricter law enforcement.
- Blue may be a more pleasant illuminating color to most people, as opposed to yellow, orange or red (according to some research, such as Lewinski, 1938).
In fact, the article quotes from a professor at the end, noting it may just be an “unusualness effect:”
Prof. Tsuneo Suzuki at Keio University said: “There are a number of pieces of data to prove blue has a calming effect upon people. However, it’s an unusual color for lighting, so people may just feel like avoiding standing out by committing crimes or suicide under such unusual illumination. It’s a little risky to believe that the color of lighting can prevent anything.”
There is a lot of research into the psychology of color, but not as much has looked into the color of blue illumination itself (as opposed to the color of an object or wall). But some research looking into short wavelength light (blue) has demonstrated that it is a potentially effective treatment for seasonal affective disorder (a seasonal type of depression; see for instance, Glickman, et al., 2006), and helps to reduce the stress response in fish (it hasn’t been yet tested on humans).
If this finding is robust and the behavior change associated with it is still prevalent a few years from now (when everyone has become accustomed to the new light color), it would be an interesting finding. A simple, inexpensive change might be effective in helping reduce at least one method of suicide (and reduce crime to boot).
Read the article: Blue streetlights may prevent crime, suicide
Photo credit: Travis Nicholson
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39 Comments to
“Can Blue-Colored Light Prevent Suicide?”
If the effect is actually as vivid as the picture would seem to indicate, it might actually cause me to shoot myself.
Very interesting
Bright blue light is used as a treatment for circadian rhythm disorder. since it is both crime and suicide rates that dropped, i assume it has an interesting effect on people’s minds and moods.
Possibly a treatment for depression?
Humanity has a dawn to dusk agrarian history and was only recently thrust into the harsh and unforgiving industrial age, night shifts, time limits, schedules, paychecks, strict daily routines and all the other pressures inherent in a working world of semi-slavery to the great industrialists. The (GRD) great republican depression driven by the sell-out of Americas industrial and manufacturing base by George Bush and his neo-con gang of criminals is changing this picture as we speak. Americans now have time to sleep in parks, even tent there, with empty stomachs, but able to sleep when they want to. They will soon be fed and cared for by the socialist revolution, started when the uber-rich ultra capitalist bankers were bailed out by the neo-cons, and the money will trickle down, even to the poorest Americans and make them rich again. The impatient folks among us will develop off-grid homes, and they too will sleep at night, as nature intended, especially when their solar charges batteries are dead. Mother Nature is a severe old matron, and any society that goes against her wishes will soon meet with her penalties and punishments and America is going to get hers!
Probably twenty years ago the Dutch railways decided to install blue-ish glass roof panels in the central concourse of the new central station in the city of Utrecht.
Their motivation (as I seem to recall after all these years) was the blue light gave an unpleasant atmosphere to this space (measuring several thousand square meters), causing people to conduct their business and leave.
Sometimes, blue lighting is also used in public toilets to prevent junks using needles. The reason being that the blue light makes it (more or less) impossible to find a vein.
My personal experience with long Minnesota winters and seasonal affective disorder had me searching for happiness on a daily basis….
This was before the deluge of available anti-depression medication…
One dreary and gray afternoon I was in a record shop and poked a bit of fun at a pair of Lennon framed glasses with blue lenses….
Then I put them on….and the gloomy day turned instantly blue and cheerful…
I was always told that the blue lights around glasgow (buchanan st + the seedy back alleys) was a way of preventing junkies (drug addicts) from shooting up - I checked, and it is pretty difficult to see a blue vein under all that blue light.
Has anyone ever studied how tinted lenses might affect wearers? In the 70’s everyone had tints; blue, brown, pinkish — not sure if they are still available.
It is good to know that blue color can prevent crime and make our day cheerful. I will definitely try this.
I wonder why did some places haven’t applied this yet especially those that have high crime rate.
Is it used here to prevent drug use in the train stations. Due to the blue shade of light, the drug users kann not see the veins properly and can not use a needle to inject the drug.
When they were making the film Cube they discovered that the actors felt angry/unhappy in the red rooms and relaxed in the blue rooms. It’s a fairly fundamental difference, but it would be useful to know what the effect of white lighting would be in preference to yellow lights.
Wonder if smurfs get depressed??
The human eye is *much* more sensitive to blue light than other lengthwaves. Could it simply be that people perceive the blue light as brighter, and thus think that they are more visible (and thus less likely to do something nefarious)?
@Anonymous at 6.48 am on December 17th, 2008: I’ve always learned that blue is the color the eyes are the LEAST sensitive to. Pick a red sheet of paper with blue letters, or vice versa, and the letters start ‘dancing’. That’s because it takes the brain longer to ‘render’ the blue color. Repeat the same experiment with any other color but blue, and it won’t happen. But prove me wrong if you can.
If you’re going to commit suicide, worries about standing out must be pretty low on the list of priorities. Maybe for Japanese people it’s different, I don’t know
Our eyes actually have the least sensitivity to blue light:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html
The visual perception of intensely blue objects is less distinct than the perception of objects of red and green. This reduced acuity is attributed to two effects. First, the blue cones are outside the fovea, where the close-packed cones give the greatest resolution. All of our most distinct vision comes from focusing the light on the fovea. Second, the refractive index for blue light is enough different from red and green that when they are in focus, the blue is slightly out of focus (chromatic aberration).
How this works in a real life situation with blue light is a little less clear, however, but it does suggest that blue light is the most unusual to our eyes and the hardest to focus on objects in. Given this biological characteristic, it may be that blue light is a light that most people would not be comfortable spending a lot of time in. And because it is a light that causes us to have a little less acuity, we may seek to minimize our interactions in it…
Just some thoughts about some additional possible explanations…
Dr. G, any chance you can find out the spectrum of the light sources used and the filters used?
Are these blue filters over standard mercury-vapor streetlights, for example? Or blue LEDs?
You know the “light and dark” thread about this stuff - the very narrow band for melatonin control. I really wonder if they are aiming for that.
It’s really beautiful, isn’t it? It’s so pretty that you don’t want to be naughty under blue light. It’s like God’s watching; so you don’t want to embarrass youself by commiting suicide either.
I wonder, does anyone know how blue light affects stupid posts? We need some of that stuff quick
@Hank - Specific information is difficult to find on these fixtures and searching online didn’t turn up anything obvious. I found that you can order fluorescent and halide lamps in different color bulbs, so I guess it’s not too far afield to assume it’s the bulb itself that is colored. (I assume putting a blue filter over a yellow sodium lamp would give you something closer to green than yellow… But they do make white lamps too, so that would work for those.)
Someone said, “Interesting, I’ll try this”. That made me think… what? are you suicidal or just have criminal tendencies?
Try what? Putting up blue streetlights? Try committing suicide under the blue lights? Gonna steal something? Want to shoot some heroin?
Maybe I’m grumpy, but just because you can comment, doesn’t mean you should.
I hate colored lights cause that decreases the variety of colors in the illuminated area. I prefer white light so all the colors are available to be reflected.
And that guy yelling about neo-cons came out of nowhere. What a fool.
I have chronic fatigue. I’ve been using colors in the hopes of boosting my energy-level. But, I’m not sure if the blue light is conducive to having more energy. I’ve tried light therapy without success. :/
Nice story!! i love the color blue!!
Aside from all those with more technical info, the reason I think blue works is because it’s the colour of the sky…
Since times began it’s been there. I guess we all must have a little liking to it.
Right?!
Who hates the sky??
I find this an interesting effect, specially because blue is also commonly linked to deppression or sadness, like the expression “feeling blue” so i find it interesting that it actually decreased suicides in some places..
I’m particularly interested in psychology of the colors, like the believing that if you paint a room orange, makes people want to consume more in a restaurant. I don’t know if that’s true, but if anyone knows something about the subject I would appreciate them to share some info. 
Blue lights also reduces crime rates of heroin addicts. Blue light blocks/hides the veins in the skin so you cant see them. They are being used in alley ways and in high school stalls.
This is very interesting! At work, the IT team chooses our desktop wallpaper and changes it each season. We currently have a pic of a nighttime view of a tall, slim lighted Christmas tree in a blue background. Many of us have said how peaceful and calming this is. It is amazing how viewing this picture can make me feel. I linger there a bit longer than I have any other picutre we have had. If The Company knew I lingered there, they would probably change it!
I have trouble waking up (three alarm clocks don’t always do the trick!) Someone once told me blue light will wake you up, reasoning that sunlight is actually blue. (This, by the way, makes no sense to me, because even if our atmosphere changes it to yellowish-white, to us, it’s still yellowish-white—not blue.)I decided to try it anyway, and whether it’s the blue that works or a placebo-kind of effect, I don’t care. I’m waking up better than I did before.
I wonder if this means we’ll have high crime and depression when we decide to move Mars?
If everyone wore a small blue light on their watch suicide would be eradicated! I’m gonna be rich!
I’m chronically suicidal. I find the image of the blue town above intensely sad. At best it’s dusk = death of day.
silly..
twits blue is a poor hunting light = no crims/cowards ( sucides need light to show off) emergentice lights RED far end spectum goback to school dinosaur
There’s a reason color therapy exists…a vibrational medicine that corresponds to energy meridians in the body.
Colored light therapy has been used for thousands of years..theres gotta be somethin to it, eh?
The wavelengths of energy that the color blue emits stimulates the parasympathetic system which calms heart-rate, reduces blood pressure and calms nervousness.
I’d say it makes a lot of sense. Its not just because its “weird” and “unusual” …
I put some blue lights in my room about a year ago and did feel a little better. Not sure if it is because I like blue however my roomates at the time were very stressful to live with. It is hard to see though. Submarines have red light because it helps prevent night blindness and isnt as bright as white bulbs. A friend of mine decided to use red lights and seeing in there was much easier. However he did become much more antisocial. There are a few Hopi indian prophecies with a blue star and Free Masons have blue lights oddly enough. (please excuse my poor spelling)
Blue light has always made me want to throw up.
There is lots of crime and self harm at bluelight disco’s
An interesting post but, although a tragic loss of life, these numbers of people who commit suicide at stations are only a fraction of one percent of the total numbers of people who kill themselves in Japan every year.
I am a JSCCP clinical psychologist and JFP psychotherapist working in Japan for over 20 years. I would like to put forward a perspective on some of the main reasons behind the unacceptably high suicide numbers Japan and so will limit my comments to what I know about here in Japan.
Mental health professionals in Japan have long known that the reason for the unnecessarily high suicide rate in Japan is due to unemployment, bankruptcies, and the increasing levels of stress on businessmen and other salaried workers who have suffered enormous hardship in Japan since the bursting of the stock market bubble here that peaked around 1997. Until that year Japan had annual suicide of rate figures between 22,000 and 24,000 each year. Following the bursting of the stock market and the long term economic downturn that has followed here since the suicide rate in 1998 increased by around 35% and since 1998 the number of people killing themselves each year in Japan has consistently remained well over 30,000 each and every year to the present day.
The current worldwide recession is of course impacting Japan too, so unless the new administration initiates very proactive and well funded local and nationwide suicide prevention programs and other mental health care initiatives, including tackling the widespread problem of clinical depression suffered by so many of the general population, it is very difficult to foresee the previous government’s stated target to reduce the suicide rate to around 23,000 by the year 2016 as being achievable. On the contrary the numbers, and the human suffering and the depression and misery that the people who become part of these numbers, have to endure may well stay at the current levels that have persistently been the case here for the last ten years. It could even get worse unless even more is done to prevent this terrible loss of life.
During these last ten years of these relentlessly high annual suicide rate numbers the English media seems in the main to have done little more than have someone goes through the files and do a story on the so-called suicide forest or internet suicide clubs and copycat suicides (whether cheap heating fuel like charcoal briquettes or even cheaper household cleaning chemicals) and mirrors at stations, and now lights at stations, without focusing on the bigger picture and need for effective action and solutions.
Economic hardship, bankruptcies and unemployment have been the main cause of suicide in Japan over the last 10 years, as the well detailed reports behind the suicide rate numbers that have been issued every year until now by the National Police Agency in Japan show only to clearly if any journalist is prepared to learn Japanese or get a bilingual researcher to do the research to get to the real heart of the tragic story of the long term and unnecessarily high suicide rate problem in Japan.
I would also like to suggest that as many Japanese people have very high reading skills in English that any articles (or works of fiction which I appreciate this is) dealing with suicide in Japan could usefully provide contact details for hotlines and support services for people who are depressed and feeling suicidal.
Useful telephone numbers and links for Japanese residents of Japan who speak Japanese and are feeling depressed or suicidal:
Inochi no Denwa (Lifeline Telephone Service)：
Japan: 0120-738-556
Tokyo: 3264 4343
Tokyo Counseling Services:
http://tokyocounseling.com/english/
http://tokyocounseling.com/jp/
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 13 Dec 2008
