Citation

Pridemore WA, Chamlin MB, Andreev E. Am. J. Public Health 2013; 103(11): 2021-2026.

Affiliation

William Alex Pridemore is with the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta. Mitchell B. Chamlin is with the Department of Criminal Justice, Texas State University-San Marcos. Evgeny Andreev is with the Center for Demographic Research, the New Economic School, Moscow, Russia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2013.301405

PMID

24028249

Abstract

Objectives. We took advantage of a natural experiment to assess the impact on suicide mortality of a suite of Russian alcohol policies. Methods. We obtained suicide counts from anonymous death records collected by the Russian Federal State Statistics Service. We used autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) interrupted time series techniques to model the effect of the alcohol policy (implemented in January 2006) on monthly male and female suicide counts between January 2000 and December 2010. Results. Monthly male and female suicide counts decreased during the period under study. Although the ARIMA analysis showed no impact of the policy on female suicide mortality, the results revealed an immediate and permanent reduction of about 9% in male suicides (Ln ω0 = -0.096; P = .01). Conclusions. Despite a recent decrease in mortality, rates of alcohol consumption and suicide in Russia remain among the highest in the world. Our analysis revealed that the 2006 alcohol policy in Russia led to a 9% reduction in male suicide mortality, meaning the policy was responsible for saving 4000 male lives annually that would otherwise have been lost to suicide. Together with recent similar findings elsewhere, our results suggest an important role for public health and other population level interventions, including alcohol policy, in reducing alcohol-related harm. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 12, 2013: e1-e6. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2013.301405).

Language: en