Alcoholic psychoses and suicide trends in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine

Abstract

Introduction

The dramatic fluctuations in suicide mortality in the countries of the former Soviet Union (fSU) over the past decades have been widely discussed in the scientific literature and are still relatively unexplored. Accumulated evidence suggests that the mixture of cultural acceptance of heavy drinking, high rate of distilled spirits consumption, and binge drinking pattern is major contributor to the suicide mortality burden in fSU countries.

Aims

The present study aims to analyze whether binge drinking is able to explain the dramatic fluctuations in suicide mortality in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine from the late Soviet to post-Soviet period.

Method

Trends in alcoholic psychoses incidence and suicide rates from 1980 to 2015 in Russia Belarus and Ukraine were analyzed employing a Spearman's rank-order correlation analysis.

Results

The estimates based on the Soviet data suggest a strong positive association between alcoholic psychoses and suicide rates in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. This positive relationship was less evident in the post-Soviet period.

Conclusion

Collectively, these findings indicate that alcohol has played an important role in the fluctuation of suicide mortality rates in the former Soviet republics during the last decades. Further monitoring of suicide mortality trends in the former Soviet countries and detailed comparisons with earlier developments in other countries remain a priority for future research.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.