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HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
Record numbers of men die from alcohol-related conditions
03/02/21 .
News
Alcohol-related deaths were at record levels last year.
England and Wales needed dry January like never before as alcohol-related deaths increased 16% in the nine months to the end of September 2020. The age-standardised death rate from alcohol-specific conditions hit a peak of 12.8 deaths per 100,000 people in January to March 2020 - the highest rate since records of this type began in 2001. (Alcohol-specific deaths are usually higher in the first quarter of the year.)
Men twice as likely to die
Men continue to die of alcohol-related causes at twice the rate of women. The male death rate from alcohol-related conditions was 17.3 -17.8 deaths per 100,000 compared with a rate for females of 8.0-8.6 deaths per 100,000.
The Forum's CEO Martin Tod said: 'These figures are extremely worrying. We know men are more likely than women to self-medicate with alcohol. This increase in deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates how important it is to tackle the mental health problems that can lead to the abuse of alcohol rather than just see the drinking problem itself.
'Once again, this is evidence of the need for a gender-sensitive approach around alcohol, around Covid-19 and around public health and health policy in general.'
Younger drinkers
These figures only include deaths as a direct consequence of wholly attributable causes such as alcoholic liver disease. It doesn’t include the deaths in which alcohol may well have played a significant part.
For this reason, deaths tend to be in older people as they have usually been abusing alcohol over a longer period of time. However, the three months from April to June 2020 saw significant increases in rates for those aged 30 to 49 and the three months July to September saw significant increases in rates for those aged 40 to 69 years.
Scotland's success
The Alcohol Health Alliance UK, of which the Forum is a member, attributes the rise to the relatively low cost of alcohol. AHA chair Professor Sir Ian Gilmore said: 'Alcohol is now 74% cheaper than it was thirty years ago, and its availability at low prices is having a catastrophic impact on our nation’s health. Scotland is the only nation in the UK to record a significant decrease in death rates since 2001, and this is thanks to the Scottish Government’s continued commitment to improving public health by introducing effective policies such as minimum unit pricing.'
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The Men’s Health Forum need your support It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking. In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to. It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for. We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing. Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.
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