Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Gender-specific risk relationship between heavy alcohol use/alcohol use disorders and suicidal thoughts and behavior among adults in the United States over time

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Suicidal thoughts and behaviors have been on the rise in the recent years in the US. There is a well-known link between heavy alcohol use/alcohol use disorders (AUDs) and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. An increase in the respective risk relationships is one way in which heavy alcohol use/AUDs may be driving the increase in the rate of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The objective of the current study was to investigate whether the gender-specific risk relationships between heavy alcohol use/AUDs and past-year (1) suicidal thoughts and (2) attempted suicide have increased over time.

Methods

Individual-level annual data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for the past 12 years (2008–2019) were utilized. Year- and gender-specific multivariate binary logistic regression analyses were first conducted. Gender-stratified random-effects meta-regressions across study years were then conducted.

Results

Heavy alcohol use/AUDs were associated with elevated odds of past-year suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide for both men and women; however, a linear increase in the risk relationships over time was not found.

Conclusion

Although a temporal increase in the risk relationships of interest was not found, until additional research in this area is conducted, heavy alcohol use/AUDs cannot be ruled out as being a driving force behind the increasing rate of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in the US.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Availability of data and material

Public use data files were used in the current study, which are freely accessible from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (https://www.datafiles.samhsa.gov).

Code availability

All analyses conducted in the current study were performed using R, and all code is available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  1. Hedegaard H, Curtin SC, Warner M (2018) Suicide rates in the United States continue to increase. In: NCHS Data Brief, no 309. National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, MD

  2. Hedegaard H, Curtin SC, Warner M (2018) Suicide mortality in the United States, 1999–2017. In: NCHS Data Brief, no 330. National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, MD

  3. Olfson M, Blanco C, Wall M, Liu SM, Saha TD, Pickering RP, Grant BF (2017) National trends in suicide attempts among adults in the United States. JAMA Psychiatr 74(11):1095–1103

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Lange S, Bagge C, Probst C, Rehm J (2021) Proportion of individuals with past-year suicidal ideation who attempted suicide over the past 10 years in the United States, and the influence of age and sex. Crisis 42(2):152–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Grant BF, Chou SP, Saha TD, Pickering RP, Kerridge BT, Ruan WJ, Huang B, Jung J, Zhang H, Fan A, Hasin DS (2017) Prevalence of 12-month alcohol use, high-risk drinking, and DSM-IV alcohol use disorder in the United States, 2001–2002 to 2012–2013: results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on alcohol and related conditions. JAMA Psychiatr 74(9):911–923

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Wilcox HC, Conner KR, Caine ED (2004) Association of alcohol and drug use disorders and completed suicide: an empirical review of cohort studies. Drug Alcohol Depend 76(Suppl):S11-19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Darvishi N, Farhadi M, Haghtalab T, Poorolajal J (2015) Alcohol-related risk of suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, and completed suicide: a meta-analysis. PLoS ONE 10(5):e0126870

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Borges G, Bagge CL, Orozco R (2016) A literature review and meta-analyses of cannabis use and suicidality. J Affect Disord 195:63–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Hufford MR (2001) Alcohol and suicidal behavior. Clin Psychol Rev 21(5):797–811

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Conner KR, McCloskey MS, Duberstein PR (2008) Psychiatric risk factors for suicide in the alcohol-dependent patient. Psychiatr Ann 38(11):742–748

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Lamis DA, Malone PS (2012) Alcohol use and suicidal behaviors among adults: a synthesis and theoretical model. Suicidol Online 3:4–23

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  12. Cheng HG, Kaakarli H, Breslau J, Anthony JC (2018) Assessing changes in alcohol use and alcohol use disorder prevalence in the United States: evidence from national surveys from 2002 through 2014. JAMA Psychiatr 75(2):211–213

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Rehm J, Kilian C, Rovira P, Shield KD, Manthey J (2021) The elusiveness of representativeness in general population surveys for alcohol. Drug Alcohol Rev 40(2):161–165

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Rehm J, Kehoe T, Gmel G, Stinson F, Grant B, Gmel G (2010) Statistical modeling of volume of alcohol exposure for epidemiological studies of population health: the US example. Popul Health Metr 8:3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Kehoe T, Gmel G, Shield KD, Gmel G, Rehm J (2012) Determining the best population-level alcohol consumption model and its impact on estimates of alcohol-attributable harms. Popul Health Metr 10:6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Canetto SS, Sakinofsky I (1998) The gender paradox in suicide. Suicide Life Threat Behav 28(1):1–23

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Rehm J, Marmet S, Anderson P, Gual A, Kraus L, Nutt DJ, Room R, Samokhvalov AV, Scafato E, Trapencieris M, Wiers RW, Gmel G (2013) Defining substance use disorders: do we really need more than heavy use? Alcohol Alcohol 48(6):633–640

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Rehm J, Anderson P, Gual A, Kraus L, Marmet S, Nutt DJ, Room R, Samokhvalov AV, Scafato E, Shield KD, Trapencieris M, Wiers RW, Gmel G (2014) The tangible common denominator of substance use disorders: a reply to commentaries to Rehm et al. (2013a). Alcohol Alcohol 49(1):118–122

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Rehm J (2016) How should prevalence of alcohol use disorders be assessed globally? Int J Methods Psychiatr Res 25(2):79–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. van Houwelingen HC, Arends LR, Stijnen T (2002) Advanced methods in meta-analysis: multivariate approach and meta-regression. Stat Med 21(4):589–624

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. DerSimonian R, Laird N (1986) Meta-analysis in clinical trials. Control Clin Trials 7(3):177–188

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. R Development Core Team (2010) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. Version 4.0.2. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria

  23. Roerecke M, Rehm J (2014) Cause-specific mortality risk in alcohol use disorder treatment patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Epidemiol 43(3):906–919

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Erol A, Karpyak VM (2015) Sex and gender-related differences in alcohol use and its consequences: contemporary knowledge and future research considerations. Drug Alcohol Depend 156:1–13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Hommer D, Momenan R, Kaiser E, Rawlings R (2001) Evidence for a gender-related effect of alcoholism on brain volumes. Am J Psychiatry 158(2):198–204

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Nolen-Hoeksema S (2004) Gender differences in risk factors and consequences for alcohol use and problems. Clin Psychol Rev 24(8):981–1010

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Case A, Deaton A (2017) Mortality and morbidity in the 21(st) century. Brookings Pap Econ Act 2017:397–476

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Borges G, Bagge CL, Cherpitel CJ, Conner KR, Orozco R, Rossow I (2017) A meta-analysis of acute use of alcohol and the risk of suicide attempt. Psychol Med 47(5):949–957

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Kalk NJ, Kelleher MJ, Curtis V, Morley KI (2019) Addressing substance misuse: a missed opportunity in suicide prevention. Addiction 114(3):387–388

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Schisterman EF, Cole SR, Platt RW (2009) Overadjustment bias and unnecessary adjustment in epidemiologic studies. Epidemiology 20(4):488–495

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under grants 1R01 AA028224 and 1R01 AA028009. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 33 Ursula Franklin St., Room T521, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S1, Canada

    Shannon Lange, Huan Jiang, Charlotte Probst, Alexander Tran & Jürgen Rehm

  2. Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Shannon Lange & Jürgen Rehm

  3. Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Huan Jiang & Jürgen Rehm

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Courtney Bagge

  5. Department of Veterans Affairs, Center for Clinical Management Research, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Courtney Bagge

  6. Heidelberg Institute for Global Health, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Charlotte Probst

  7. Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, Medical Sciences Building, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jürgen Rehm

  8. Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Jürgen Rehm

  9. Institute of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and Center of Clinical Epidemiology and Longitudinal Studies (CELOS), Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Jürgen Rehm

  10. Department of International Health Projects, Institute for Leadership and Health Management, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Moscow, Russian Federation

    Jürgen Rehm

Authors
  1. Shannon Lange
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Huan Jiang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Courtney Bagge
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Charlotte Probst
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Alexander Tran
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Jürgen Rehm
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shannon Lange.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

None to declare.

Ethics approval

Not applicable. The current study utilized anonymized publicly available data.

Consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Lange, S., Jiang, H., Bagge, C. et al. Gender-specific risk relationship between heavy alcohol use/alcohol use disorders and suicidal thoughts and behavior among adults in the United States over time. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 57, 721–726 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-022-02225-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-022-02225-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation