A person with alcohol poisoning who has passed out or can't wake up could die. If you think that someone has alcohol poisoning, get medical attention right away. Alcohol poisoning also can occur when adults or children accidentally or intentionally drink household products that contain alcohol. This cross-sectional study used publicly available data; therefore, institutional review board approval and informed consent were not needed, per National Cancer Institute policy. The WHO stated that self-poisoning using pesticides is one of the leading causes of suicide worldwide.
Statistical Analysis
Various classical studies found an excess of suicide among alcoholics [73–80]. Beck and Steer [81] and Beck et al. [82] found that alcoholism was the strongest single predictor of subsequent completed suicide in a sample of attempted suicides. Several original studies have investigated the effect of alcohol use disorder (AUD) on suicidal thought and behavior, but there are serious discrepancies across the studies.
Institutional Review Board Statement
It is necessary to analyze suicide statistics in Poland very carefully [23]. Until 2012, data on suicides were collected in the General Police Headquarters of Poland after the screening was conducted and completed. From 2013, data were entered immediately after the incident, i.e., when it was established that a suicide attempt took place, and the system allows for their modification if it is determined at a later stage of the proceedings that no suicide attempt took place. In the case of the Statistics Poland, data were updated from the death records, and suicide attempts are not reported at all. Such a situation results in significant discrepancies in the reported data, which do not reflect the actual situation and require the development of an optimal form of their registration, enabling reliable data. To properly plan preventive actions, it is necessary to determine the scale of a particular problem.
Screening and data extraction
Disinhibition, in which alcohol acts to remove psychological and even physiological barriers to self-harm, has also been proposed as a relevant factor [193]. Recent findings from the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) https://rehabliving.net/characteristics-of-high-functioning-alcoholics/ [32] indicate that the 12-month prevalence of DSM-IV-TR alcohol dependence in the adult population in USA is 3.8% and that of alcohol abuse 4.7% [33]. This means that, every year, 8.5% of the adult US population in USA has an alcohol use disorder [33].
COVID-19 pandemic and alcohol consumption: Impacts and interconnections
- A large group of suicide attempters in Poland in 1999–2020 were under the influence of alcohol, but since 2017 there has been a steady decline in the number of suicide deaths under the influence of alcohol.
- The authors would like to thank the Islamic Azad University, Hamadan Branch, for financial support of this study.
- Cognitive rigidity and obsessional traits seem to influence the risk of suicide in the elderly [213,214], probably because these traits undermine the ability of the elderly to cope with the challenges of ageing, which often calls for substantial adaptations.
- We did not examine other factors (e.g., alcohol use disorders, availability of alcohol) that might also influence associations between acute alcohol use and method of suicide.
- Suicide is the result of complex interactions between biological, psychological, social and environmental factors (Figure 1), and all of these conditions impact on one another.
- The characteristics of the included studies are summarized and listed in Table 1.
Universal preventive interventions are directed to the entire population, selective interventions target people at greater risk for suicidal behavior, and indicated preventions are targeted at individuals who have already exhibited self-destructive behavior. People with psychiatric disorders, alcohol and/or drug abuse, newly diagnosed severe physical illness, past suicide attempts, homelessness, institutionalization, and other types of social exclusion are the object of selective interventions. Mood [10,16,17], anxiety [18] and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders [16,19,20] have been found to constitute independent risk factors for suicidal behavior. Additionally, co-morbid psychiatric disorders are found to be common in patients with alcohol use disorders [21–24]. Alcohol use is highly prevalent worldwide, and suicide is highly prevalent in populations of patients with alcohol use disorders.
1. Prevention of Suicide by Focusing on the Alcohol Abuse Component
Self-poisoning accounts for 25% of total suicides in the United Kingdom and is the most frequent method of committing suicide among the younger population in the U.S. [13,14]. Rates of suicide by consuming poison are higher in developing countries, especially suicide by consuming a pesticide. In high-income countries, drugs used in attempts to commit suicide include psychotropic drugs, analgesics, antihistamines, antidepressants, psychoactive drugs, and sedative-hypnotics [15]. Alcohol plays an important role in pesticide suicide and self-harm, both for treating pesticide self-poisoning and as an underlying factor for self-harm among people who drink and their family members. Research in this area has been conducted in a few countries in South-East Asia and little attention has been paid to harm to others from alcohol. More research is needed to incorporate validated measures of chronic and acute alcohol use as well as alcohol’s harm to others into surveillance studies of pesticide self-harm and suicide studies.
Yet of the 4,000 suicide deaths in our country each year, almost one in four involve alcohol. Research shows that heavy drinking may increase the risk of suicide by impairing decision making and making self-regulation more difficult. For those experiencing suicidal ideation, such drinking increases the risk of suicide exponentially.
It is quite common that a drunk person drinks various poisonous liquids, in the belief that these are alcoholic drinks. This happens when poisonous liquids are stored in bottles with labels of vodkas, wines, or other alcoholic drinks. Additionally, a wrong combination of drugs, especially prescribed by several doctors, can cause a strong toxic effect that is dangerous to health and life [22].
It can cause alcohol poisoning or lead to other dangers like motor vehicle accidents. However, alcoholism and alcohol misuse can significantly increase one’s risk of death by suicide. Data on the number of suicides per year are provided by the General Police Headquarters of Poland (the GPHP) and the Statistics Poland (GUS). The GPHP base their analysis on the KSIP-10 report on suicide attempt/behavior. It is not necessary to introduce the social security number of a victim there.
First, wherever possible, we used the full adjusted forms of RR and OR controlling for factors such as age, gender, race, mental disorder, drug abuse, smoking, marital status, body mass index, educational level, employment status, income, and living alone. However, the confounding effect was not completely ruled out because some studies reported crude forms https://rehabliving.net/ of RR or OR estimates. This issue may lead to overestimation of the overall measures of association. Second, there were 12 studies (mostly old studies) that seemed potentially eligible for inclusion in this meta-analysis, but their full texts were not accessible. We requested the relevant institutes to find the full texts for us, but they could not.
Overt suicidal behavior and indirect self-destructive behaviors, which often lead to premature death, are common, especially in residents of nursing homes, where more immediate means to commit suicide are restricted. His time-series analysis suggests a positive relationship between the level of vodka sales per capita and suicide rates with no time lag and at first degree lags. As a matter of fact, the almost contemporaneous association between the two time-trends may support the point that binge-drinking of strong spirits is a risk factor for autodestructive behavior. It is important to point out that the size of the bivariate association between the level of vodka sales and suicide rates for men is substantially greater than for women. This means that alcohol-related suicide is mainly a male phenomenon, as was shown in previous studies [96,97].
The purpose of the present study was to conduct a detailed analysis of acute use of alcohol and the 3 leading methods of suicide using NVDRS data and to explore age, gender, and racial/ethnic differences in the use of alcohol before suicide and the dosage of alcohol. Results could provide a more complete understanding of acute alcohol use in suicide, including insights into which demographic groups are most likely to carry out lethal acts of suicide while drinking, at what concentration of alcohol, and using which method. There is growing evidence that public policies aimed at reducing alcohol consumption and availability might reduce rates of suicide.21–23 Accordingly, the present study might suggest which groups could benefit most from such policies from the standpoint of suicide prevention.
In Canada, 12 people die by suicide each day — and another 200 attempt suicide. While the prevalence and destructiveness of suicide is clear, much less is known about why people die by suicide. If you think that someone has alcohol poisoning, seek medical care right away. It's not necessary to have all the above symptoms before seeking medical help.
The estimated annual mortality from suicide is 14.5 suicides per 100,000 people, about one death every 40 seconds [1]. Self-inflicted deaths were the tenth leading cause of death worldwide and accounted for 1.5% of all deaths [3]. Suicide rates differ by sex, age, ethnic origin and death registration system, as well as by region and over time. We can have high confidence based on the current evidence that AUD increases the risk of suicide.
However, despite higher rates of impulsive attempts and a higher level of lethality in patients with alcohol use disorders, the use of alcohol at the time of attempt did not differ significantly between impulsive and non-impulsive attempters [113–115]. In a study of 450 alcohol-dependent men conducted in the mid-eighties, suicide attempts predicted increased alcohol-related problems at one-year follow-up [69], but this has not been confirmed in later studies [70–72]. Measures of alcohol effect were expressed as risk ratio (RR) and odds ratio (OR). RR is the relative incidence risk of events in the exposed group versus the non-exposed group occurring at any given point in time. OR is the relative odds of outcome in the exposed group versus the non-exposed group occurring at any given point in time.
LS developed the key themes, which were discussed with JBS and the wider research team. This scoping review followed the Joanna Briggs Institute guidance on scoping reviews [23]. As the literature in this field was expected to be limited and diverse, a scoping review was considered appropriate.
Furthermore, efforts to prevent harmful use of alcohol should be integrated into all pesticide suicide prevention and treatment efforts. To our knowledge this was the first study to examine the moderating effects of gender, age, and race/ethnicity on the presence of acute alcohol and the level of drinking across leading methods of suicide in a national sample. Results showed that among suicides tested for alcohol in the United States, alcohol was present in more than one third of the time in each of the leading methods of suicide. Moreover, among suicides that were tested and drank, alcohol levels were high, with the mean exceeding the legal limit of 0.08 grams per deciliter for drinking and driving. These results underscored the importance of considering both alcohol use and alcohol dosage in models of the drinking–suicide link. Significant milestones like weddings, birthdays, and holidays are often celebrated with a toast.
In many low-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region, suicide is the leading cause of death in early to middle adult life and pesticides account for around half to two-thirds of the suicides. These data correspond to those discussed in this systematic review and highlight that pesticide poisoning is still a global and relevant public health concern [12,14]. The characteristics of the included studies are summarized and listed in Table 1.