Reducing alcohol consumption will cut suicide rates, says expert

IRISH people will have to exercise much more control over alcohol, especially binge drinking, if they want to reduce worrying suicide rates, an international expert told a conference on suicide, yesterday.

The challenge facing our worsening binge drinking culture is to understand why young adults, in particular, feel it necessary to get “out of their minds” and drunk, according to Professor Ad Kerkhof from Amsterdam.

Describing binge drinking as abnormal behaviour, he said the new phenomenon in Irish society of shot drinking, which was drinking to get drunk quickly, should be fought at all costs.

“The bottom line is if Ireland wants to have a reduction in suicide rates, the Irish must stop drinking alcohol.

“They should change the practice of singing while drunk into the habit of singing instead of drinking,” Professor Kerkhof told the annual conference of the Irish Association of Suicidology in the Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney.

The conference examined the close links between alcohol and drug misuse and suicide, and the professor said alcohol misuse and suicidal behaviour were the same, psychologically speaking.

“Both are aimed at changing consciousness of misery. Both change the consciousness of worrying, negative thoughts, negative feelings, anxiety and stress. Both can be considered to be stress management techniques,” said Prof Kerkhof of the clinical psychology department of , Vrije University Amsterdam.

He also said Irish society should not allow the drinks industry to be so dominant, stressing that society should constrain the industry.

Professor Kerkhof, who is co-editor of the scientific journal of the International Association for Suicide Prevention, urged parents to take a stronger line against alcohol and to set higher standards, even if it meant risking relationships with their offspring.

“The drinking of young people, especially binge drinking in order to become unconscious, is dangerous.

“People who do this are very unhappy. Young people who do so have emotional problems. We should never take this as normal. It is extremely abnormal,” he said.

He also maintained that restrictions and control worked. In Russia during Gorbachev’s perestroika, when vodka was restricted to a half litre per person per month and there were heavy fines for public drunkenness, the suicide rate among males declined by one third, the professor said.