The peak times for people turning up in hospital emergency departments suffering from self- harm after drinking large volumes of alcohol tend to be linked to public holidays, according to research by the National Suicide Research Foundation.
Prof Ella Arensman, director of research with the foundation, said that consistently over the past five years, there had been peaks in the number of people at emergency departments having self-harmed after consuming alcohol on January 1st, March 17th and 18th, the June bank holiday Monday and October 1st. They showed self- harming after drinking alcohol was “very strongly associated with public holidays”.
She presented the findings at a conference in Dublin yesterday hosted by Alcohol Action Ireland on the impact of alcohol on mental health.
The research is conducted by the foundation in collaboration with University College Cork and draws on data collected at every emergency department between 2002 and 2012. It covers more than 100,000 presentations for self-harm and the findings therefore are “very, very robust”, according to Prof Arensman.
Depressive effect
She said the average number of self-harm presentations across the State a day was 33, but this rose to 50 or more on the dates she had highlighted. “Alcohol abuse is one of the factors contributing to high rates of self- harm among young people and adults,” she said. This was the “direct effect of the depressive effect of heavy drinking”.
She said a pattern of hospital attendances was repeated over the seven-day week, where the peaks occurred from early Sunday morning into Tuesday.
“This is consistent week in, week out,” Prof Arensman said. “It is also striking that women are presenting with self-harm after heavy alcohol consumption in the same numbers as men, which is a new trend over the past five years.
Source: Kitty Holland, Irish Times, 21/11/13
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