A 1999 report by the Department of Health found that, among suicides outside hospital, 38 per cent had a history of alcohol misuse, and 26 per cent a history of drug misuse.[34]

Estimates suggest that around 15 per cent of people who abuse alcohol may eventually kill themselves.[35] Another estimate suggests that, among people who abuse drugs, the risk of suicide is twenty times that of the general population.[36]

Research suggests that men are nine times as likely to abuse alcohol as women, and men diagnosed with alcoholism are six times as likely to commit suicide as men in the general population. Although women are less likely than men to abuse alcohol, those who do, are at a much greater risk of suicide than men, with a suicide rate twenty times that of the general population.[37]

It has been suggested that the role of alcohol and drugs is of particular significance in those suicides which appear to be impulsive. Alcohol and drugs are particularly implicated in suicides of young men. It has been suggested that the increase in drug use by young people in recent years could be a factor in explaining the dramatic rise in young male suicides in the eighties and early nineties.

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