[Suicidal alcoholic patients: profile, risk factors and review of the literature from 1955 to 1988].

Alcoholism and suicide are two Public Health problems which are linked at the epidemiological and clinical levels. Research over suicide risk factors among alcoholic subjects has developed mainly among medicalized psychiatric populations. Suicide occurs late among alcoholic patients, and affects particularly men and socially isolated subjects. The main risk factors relate to the decrease of the socio-economic status. loss of job and of income-, to the interpersonal loss--i.e. family bereavement or breach of relation, to the existence of a suicidal ideation often communicated or of suicidal antecedents, to a degradation of the physical state or the presence of some affections like gastro-duodenal ulcer. The identified factors are of little specificity. It is difficult to assess their interrelations and their respective true values. The reliable prediction of a later suicide remains presently impossible. Progress in analytic research over the alcoholic patients' suicide could result from the standardization of populations and of studied factors and from the use of multivariate analysis statistical methods.