Mad March and full moons

For many years myself and many colleagues have believed that we have noticed a correlation between increased referrals and more fragile clients around full moons and during the month of March.

History and scientific evidence

According to Wikipedia:

The Ides of March is a day on the Roman Calender that corresponds to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.

Apparently the word "beware" was attached to the phrase centuries later when Shakespeare used it in his play "Julius Caesar".

The belief about the impact of the moon on human behaviour goes back to the Roman scientist and military commander Pliny the Elder and has continued ever since (as stated by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in his article "Can a full moon affect behaviour?" which can be found on ABC Science  http://www.abc.net.au/science). He goes on to state that there is no scientific evidence for the moon's effect on human behaviour, and gives other explanations for the beliefs.

The strength of beliefs

However beliefs, rather than facts, play a major role in how we and our clients choose to live our lives.

Strongly held beliefs are often linked to emotions rather than logic, and we will usually recruit evidence to the belief. The website "Changing Minds" has more interesting things to say about beliefs especially in relation to their strength and type (www.changingminds.org)

Changing unhelpful attitudes and beliefs

Some beliefs are unhelpful (but we need to be careful how we decide this). If they need to be gently challenged, these are some useful strategies I have found:

1. An essential part of our role is to have access to accurate and up to date information to pass on to our clients, as they may have been misinformed by popular beliefs or inaccurate information passed on by others, especially when it comes to legal issues (and Family Law in particular). Accurate information can have an impact on changing unhelpful beliefs.

2. Years ago I attended a Core Domestic Violence Train the Trainer session, which was very much based on ways of changing attitudes around Domestic Violence. One of the things that impacted on me was the idea of encouraging people to sit an old belief next to a new one to see how this impacted, rather than persuading them to give up the old belief. I have used this since with clients in all sorts of contexts, as I find it to be a respectful rather than a confronting intervention.

3. The thoughts, feelings and behaviours triangle and how each of these impact on the other. The theory here is that, by changing one, then the others may change. Beliefs are, after all, thoughts.

Enriched lives

So, is the belief in Mad March and the impact of Full Moons on human behaviour unhelpful? This is an individual decision. What richness we would lose from our lives if we only lived by scientific facts.