Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lange, Shannon
• Jiang, Huan
• Štelemėkas, Mindaugas
• Tran, Alexander
• Cherpitel, Cheryl
• Giesbrecht, Norman
• Gostautaite Midttun, Nijole
• Jasilionis, Domantas
• Kaplan, Mark S.
• Manthey, Jakob
• Xuan, Ziming
• Rehm, Jürgen

Titel

Evaluating the Impact of Alcohol Policy on Suicide Mortality: A Sex-Specific Time-Series Analysis for Lithuania

Ist Teil von

• Archives of suicide research, 2023-04, Vol.27 (2), p.339-352

Ort / Verlag

England: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• It is reasonable to believe that the alcohol policy environment can impact the suicide mortality rates in a given country, considering the well-known link between alcohol use and death by suicide. The current literature, albeit limited, suggests that an increase in alcohol taxation may result in a decrease in deaths by suicide and that the effect is sex-specific. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to test the impact of three alcohol control policy enactments (in 2008, 2017 and 2018) on suicide mortality among adults 25-74 years of age in Lithuania, by sex. To estimate the unique impact of three alcohol control policies, we conducted interrupted time-series analyses by employing a generalized additive mixed model on monthly sex-specific age-standardized suicide mortality rates from January 2001 to December 2018. Analyses showed a significant impact of the 2017 (p = 0.016) alcohol control policy on suicide mortality for men only. Specifically, we estimated that in the year following the 2017 policy enactment, approximately 57 (95% CI: 9-107) deaths by suicide were prevented among men, 25-74 years of age. The three policy enactments tested were not found to significantly impact the suicide mortality rate among women. Alcohol control policies involving pricing, which result in a notable decrease in alcohol affordability, could be a cost-effective indirect suicide prevention mechanism in not only countries of the former Soviet Union, but in other high-income countries with a comparable health care system to that in Lithuania. HIGHLIGHTS Increasing excise tax on alcohol was found to have a sex-specific impact on suicide mortality The 2017 alcohol policy prevented 57 deaths by suicide among men, 25-74 years of age, in the following year Alcohol pricing policies may be a cost-effective indirect suicide prevention mechanism