The cold, gray days of winter have melted into spring, bringing warmer weather, the sweet songs of birds, and colorful, fragrant flowers.

But for many, spring marks a sharp rise in the despair that all too often leads to taking their own lives.Although it is commonly believed that most suicides happen in the winter, especially around the holidays, at least two studies, one published in 2005 by F. Stephen Bridges, and another in 2012 by the National Institutes of Health, found that suicides peak in the spring and early summer.For Tara Stauffenberg of Tamaqua, those sweet soft days of early summer will forever be clouded by pain. Her brother, Cory P. McCarroll, 32, ended his life on June 28, 2009.Cory was 4 when his and Tara's father, Jack McCarroll, took his own life in 1981 at the age of 30.Cory, plagued by depression and substance addiction, made an attempt at suicide in January 2009."I said, please don't do it," Stauffenberg recalls. "We grew up with it. Please don't do this to me again. He did promise me, but ..."Cory McCarroll would never talk about his problems, and rebuffed attempts to help him, Stauffenberg says."I never really saw it coming," she said."He was the life of the party, but he held his suffering inside."Experts have yet to discover why suicides hit that seasonal peak."There is no definitive reasons to account for these higher rates of suicide in the spring and early summer," says Dr. Nadine Kaskow, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia."Theories relate to the environment. For example, increased levels of sunshine and higher temperatures; to sociological factors, such as increased social interaction and activity, and to biology, such as seasonal changes in hormonal and neurotransmitter levels," she says.Suicide is a complex matter, says Dr. David Miller of the American Association of Suicidology."Although suicide rates do elevate somewhat during the spring, the precise reasons why this occurs is not currently known. Some suggest a biological component, but thus far we have no definitive answers, and it is likely that there are multiple reasons, given the complexity that is suicide," he says."The idea that suicides peak around the winter holidays is a widely accepted myth. In fact, the month that consistently has the fewest recorded suicides is December."The reason for this seems to be that December is a month in which there are many holidays bringing people together, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, for example."We know that a lack of perceived belongingness and a sense of social disconnection is a major contributing factor in the desire for suicide, and that anything that can counteract that perception can function as a protective factor," says Dr. Miller."For example, we know that suicide rates generally decline around major holidays (not just the December holidays), when more people are presumably getting together."