Preventing access to drugs could reduce the suicide rate. | Image: Fotolia/Richard Villalon

People with chronic alcoholism commit suicide more often than members of the general population. And they are more likely to use their medication to do it than other at-risk groups. This is the finding of a research group that has investigated all recorded suicides in Switzerland between 2000 and 2010 where data on blood alcohol concentration at the time of death were available. In over a third of cases, the deceased had drunk alcohol shortly before death. And clinical histories show that three-quarters of them presented what doctors officially term an alcohol-use disorder.

For Thomas Reisch of the Münsingen Psychiatric Centre, one of the co-authors of the study, these results are not unexpected, nor is it surprising that pharmaceutical poisoning was a particularly frequent suicide method. “Many alcoholics are very accustomed to taking drugs because they are already undergoing intensive medical treatment”. For the same reason, they are often in possession of compounds that can be used to commit suicide.

It is here that the authors of the study see a possible approach to prevention. “If you restrict their access to lethal drugs, then many suicides could be prevented”, says Reisch. That’s why doctors should be as reticent as possible when prescribing drugs with ingredients such as benzodiazepine. It would also be conceivable for such drugs to be administered only under medical supervision or at a pharmacy – or for them to be dispensed in very small packaging sizes.

Stéphane Praz