Psychological autopsy studies: the role of alcohol use in adolescent and young adult suicides.
Alcohol abusers seem to be prone to both suicide attempts and completions. The relationship between alcohol abuse and suicide in adolescence is complex.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the role of alcohol abuse and dependence in adolescent suicide in psychological autopsy studies.


METHODS
A search in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) PubMed database using "adolescents" and "all child: 0-18 years" as the search terms for age and "psychological autopsy" as the search term for title or abstract.


RESULTS
Forty articles met the selection criteria and each one is described. There was a high prevalence of alcohol abuse detected in the studies (range 21.42% to 43.47% in samples aged under 20 years). Alcohol misuse was present in suicides in the form of chronic abuse, acute abuse and dependence.


CONCLUSIONS
Alcohol abuse and dependence is highly prevalent among adolescent suicides. In many studies, alcohol consumption is analyzed in combination with drug abuse. Further studies are necessary to clarify the prevalence of chronic and acute alcohol abuse in order to identify specific high-risk population groups and design antisuicidal interventions for them. Both acute and chronic alcohol use should be evaluated when assessing suicide risk in adolescents.
Giner
Lucas
L
Department of Psychiatry, University of Seville, Spain. lginer@us.es
Carballo
Juan J
JJ
Guija
Julio A
JA
Sperling
Dahlia
D
Oquendo
Maria A
MA
Garcia-Parajua
Pedro
P
Sher
Leo
L
Giner
José
J
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology; D003858:Dependency, Psychological; D005260:Female; D005555:Forensic Psychiatry; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data