Specialist category essay: Effective strategies for managing alcohol misuse are central to the promotion of health and reducing suicide. Discuss Available to Purchase

Alcohol misuse is injurious to health, and commonly associated with suicide. However, correlation is not proof of causation: it is valid to consider that social inequalities, such as unemployment and poverty, underlie alcohol misuse, ill health and suicide. Making alcohol misuse strategies central to health promotion and suicide reduction risks a victim‐blaming culture, in which health consequences are viewed as being solely related to an individual's behaviour, ignoring external social conditions; the majority of suicides not related to alcohol misuse being failed by such a policy; and further abdication of political intervention at a societal level.