Dan Neville (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this issue.

While the connection between alcohol abuse, suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm is internationally recognised, it is not highlighted often enough. Alcohol dependence often leads to social decline and isolation, which is a potent cause of suicide. Alcohol dependence leads to loss of self-esteem and, hence, depression. These psychological changes predispose people to suicide. Intoxication produces increased impulsiveness and the weakening of normal restraints against dangerous behaviour. This is very important in the context of suicide. Alcohol abuse may be secondary to and an attempt to cope with recurrent episodes of depression.

Little information is available on the position or role of alcohol in the suicides of non-alcoholics, but some studies indicate that a proportion of these people had been drinking shortly before their deaths, perhaps to bolster their courage. It is well established that people who become dependent on alcohol have a high mortality rate through suicide. We also know that if a person who is mildly depressed, particularly a young person, is involved in heavy binge drinking, a period of severe depression can follow for a period. Long after the effects of the alcohol have waned, depression remains. Some research indicates that this could last for from eight to more than 12 hours after a binge drinking session.

With regard to self-harm, the Minister of State is aware that last year, 2011, there were 12,216 presentations to hospital emergency departments in this regard, involving 983 individuals. These presentations demonstrated repeated acts of self-harm and the impact of alcohol on self-harming. During the period 2006 to 2011, the National Suicide Research Foundation in Cork, which keeps the register on this, identified 45,284 individuals involved in 69,581 self-harming presentations. Some 35% of presentations within this period were due to repeat acts. A total of 374 individuals were involved in ten or more repeated acts of self-harm during that period.

Nationally, overdose involving either prescribed drugs or over-the-counter medication, or both, was the most frequently used method of self-harm across all repeated presentations. However, people who had used alcohol at the time of the indexed self-harm act engaged significantly more often in intentional overdose compared with those who had not. Those who used alcohol had also engaged more often in highly lethal methods when they presented after repeat self-harm incidents. People who had not used alcohol in the indexed self-harm act had engaged in self-cutting significantly more often when they presented for repeat incidences. Therefore, those who used alcohol had more serious and more dangerous attempts at self-harm than those who did not abuse alcohol in the same way.

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