According to the new study it was found that alcoholics who are alone and suffer from alcohol-use disorders (AUDs) are more prone to commit suicide. This shows the great impact of personality disorders (PDs) on suicide attempt.
Statistics show that up to 40 % of patients who seek treatment for AUDs reports to have attempted suicide six to 10 times greater than suicide attempts among the general population. The results were published in the journal of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. Ulrich W. Preuss, assistant professor of psychiatry at Martin-Luther-University of Halle, Germany said that alcohol and PD are two main risk factors for suicidal behavior.Kenneth R. Conner, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center says that previously no substantial data was available to relate suicide attempts to PD and alcohol consumption. But this study is highly analyzed all personality disorders using a credible research interview in a large alcohol-dependent sample. They examined 376 (303 males, 73 females) patients from an alcohol-dependence treatment ward in Germany. All patients were 18 years of age or older.
Personality-disorder diagnoses were divided into three clusters: A (paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal), B (histrionic, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial) and C (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, depressive, negativistic). Results indicate that 55% of the patients had a PD, and approximately 25% had a history of at least one suicide attempt. Those who are in the cluster B division also suffering from known risk factors such as depression, marital status, aggression and impulsive traits and living alone are at highest risk. In the future these findings will help the clinicians on how to assess suicide risk in these subjects.
