Research Trends Suicide and Alcohol Psychoses in Belarus 1970–2005 Yury E. Razvodovsky Grodno State Medical University, Belarus Abstract. Background: The relationship between alcohol and suicide is well documented. The research evidence suggests an important role for a cultural and social context in the alcohol-suicide association. Purpose: To estimate the aggregate level effect of alcohol consumption on the suicide rate in Slavic culture. Method: Trends in the suicide and alcohol-psychoses morbidity rate in the former Soviet Slavic republic of Belarus from 1970 to 2005 were analyzed employing an ARIMA time-series analysis. Results: The results of the analysis suggest a close association between the suicide and alcohol-psychoses morbidity rate. Conclusion: This study replicates previous findings that highlighted a close link between alcohol and suicide at the aggregate level. The results of this study also suggest that alcohol is responsible for the fluctuation of the suicide rate in the former Soviet republic of Belarus during the last decades. Keywords: suicide, alcohol psychoses rate, ARIMA time-series analysis, Belarus, 1970–2005 Alcohol has long been considered an important factor in suicide behavior (Lester, 1997). In recent years the rela- tionship between hazardous alcohol use and suicide has been thoroughly studied and described in the scientific lit- erature (Kolves, Vatnik, Tooding, & Wasserman, 2006). Aggregate-level studies usually report a significant and positive association between alcohol consumption and sui- cide rates (Caces & Harford, 1998; Lester, 1995; Razvo- dovsky, 2001; Rossow, 1993; Skog & Elekes, 1993). How- ever, some countries with high levels of alcohol consump- tion do not exhibit high suicide rates, suggesting an important role for a cultural and social context in the alco- hol–suicide association (Lester, 1997; Norstrom, 1995). For example, a time-series analysis of annual aggregate- level data on alcohol sales and suicide rates for the period 1950–1995, covering 14 European Union countries, high- lighted that the stronger association between alcohol sales and suicide was in the northern European countries, which are characterized by a low per capita consumption and ex- plosive drinking pattern, or “dry” drinking cultures, while the weakest was in the southern European countries with higher consumption levels, or “wet” drinking cultures (Ramstedt, 2001). These findings support the hypothesis that suicide and alcohol are more closely connected in the countries where the drinking culture is characterized by heavy drinking episodes. One of the most interesting aspects of worldwide health trends in the late-twentieth century was the large decline in the suicide rate in the former Soviet Slavic republics be- tween 1984 and 1987, followed by an equally dramatic in- crease in the 1990s. Several explanations have been put forward to explain the latter increasing suicide rate: the de- terioration in general socioeconomic conditions, changes in norms and values, and other symptoms of anomie and social stress (Gavrilova, Semyonova, Evdokushkina, & Gavrilov, 2000; Lester, 1998; Varnic, Wasserman, Danko- wixz, & Eklund, 1998). Most authors agree that the in- crease in alcohol consumption is an important determinant of the suicide mortality crisis in the former Soviet republics in the last decades (Pridemore, 2006; Wasserman, Varnik, & Eklund, 1994). The hypothesis that the suicide fluctua- tion in the former Soviet republics may be related to alco- hol is based on the positive association between trends in the alcohol consumption per capita and suicide rates (Nemtsov, 2003; Pridemore & Chamlin, 2006; Razvodov- sky, 2001). However, we should keep in mind a potential limitation of these studies, i.e., that the reliable estimation of total alcohol consumption at the population level in the former Soviet republics is a tremendously difficult task (Nemtsov, 2000). Therefore, we assume that the alcohol- psychoses morbidity rate (the number of newly revealed cases of alcohol psychoses) may better capture the aggre- gate level of alcohol consumption than official sales statis- tics and an expert estimation. This assumption is consistent with the findings, which suggest that the alcohol-psychoses morbidity rate is among the most consistent predictors of the rate of alcohol-related problems in Belarus (Razvodov- sky, 2002). Similarly, it was shown that the prevalence of alcohol-related psychiatric disorders was the strong predic- tor of the regional variation in suicide rates in Slovenia (Marusic, 1999). The level of alcohol consumption and the suicide rate in DOI 10.1027/0227-5910.28.2.61 © 2007 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers Crisis 2007; Vol. 28(2):61–66