Prevention of alcohol-related suicide: a rapid review

Abstract

Suicide remains a leading cause of death worldwide, with an estimated 700,000 suicide deaths per year. The World Health Organization identifies reducing alcohol use as one component of comprehensive approaches to suicide prevention. This paper conducted a rapid review of the evidence on alcohol-related suicide prevention interventions. PubMed, Embase and Web of Science were searched for articles related to alcohol, suicide, prevention, and policies, published between 1990 and 2020. 5293 articles were identified; after deduplication, 2567 studies were screened at the title and abstract level. 402 articles underwent full-text review. 69 articles were ultimately included and underwent data extraction. Interventions were categorized as policy interventions, community-based interventions, and clinical interventions. While there is evidence that policy interventions targeting alcohol may be associated with lower suicide rates, more evidence using stronger study designs is needed. The evidence for community interventions was mixed and supported the need for further research on these types of interventions. Pharmaceutical and therapy-based clinical interventions also showed some promise, with more research needed. Overall, despite evidence of alcohol’s role in suicide attempts and deaths, few interventions have been developed with the purpose of addressing alcohol-related suicide. More research is needed to identify effective interventions to prevent alcohol-related suicide.

Keywords:

• Suicide
• alcohol
• policies
• prevention
• community
• clinical

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Eva Fernandes for her contributions to the revision of this manuscript. Short sections of this paper were presented at the Alcohol Use & Suicide Webinar, November 12, 2020, organized by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, and at the Issues of Substance Conference, Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, November 23–25, 2021. Work on this manuscript was made possible by funding received from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 Refers to the number of participants randomized in randomized controlled trials. Sample sizes not reported for non-RCT studies.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this study was received from the Public Health Agency of Canada, contract no. 4500414332