Alcohol a key factor in suicides, study finds

FAILURE TO implement measures which reduce alcohol consumption in Ireland meant that "we are not dealing with a known and preventable factor in suicide", Dr Dermot Walsh of the Health Research Bureau (HRB) has said.

Principal investigator in mental health at the HRB, Dr Walsh was speaking at the launch of a new study on suicide in European countries, including Ireland.

The HRB study found that, whereas the reasons behind suicide in Ireland were not conclusive and the effectiveness of preventive measures had yet to be confirmed, the one significant factor linked to suicide over time was found to be alcohol.

This was underpinned by a European report by Anderson and Baumberg in 2006 which found that at least one-in-six suicides was shown to be alcohol-related.

Dr Walsh said that "controlling alcohol-related problems may therefore be the only evidence-based measure in the prevention of suicide and deliberate self harm.

"A variety of reports have dealt with addressing alcohol-related problems, including the Report of the Strategic Task Force on Alcohol, 2004."

He said, however, that "failure to implement measures that actually do work, such as increasing prices, reducing the availability of points of sale and tightening controls on advertising, is disappointing, and means that we are not dealing with a known and preventable factor in suicide".

Overall, the HRB study found from 2005 figures that Irish rates of suicide are low when compared with all other EU countries, the greatest differences being the disproportionately high number of Irish male suicides in younger age categories and lower suicide rates among Irish people aged 65 years and over.

More generally, it found that there had been a slow decline in suicides in Ireland between 2001 and 2006, and that Irish suicide rates among males were and always have been three to four times greater than those of females, which was in keeping with international experience.

The HRB report revealed there was considerable under-reporting of suicide in Ireland, according to official records between 1864 and 1980, which made it difficult to conclude that suicide rates had risen over an 1864 to 2006 study period.

However, it did find from comparisons of clinical and official data in the 1950s and 1960s, that in Ireland over that period actual suicide was three times greater than was officially recorded. Further details from the study can be found at www.hrb.ie/publications