Rising number of mental health patients linked to alcohol consumption

Rising number of mental health patients linked to alcohol consumption
Published 10 August 2019

The number of mental health patients receiving treatment at hospitals has increased, and most of cases are related to alcohol consumption, according to the Ministry of Health and Sports’ latest development during three years. 

An official of the Ministry of Health and Sports said: “The number of hospitalized patients increased from over 36,000 in 2012 to over 86,000 in 2017. It increased from 2.4 per cent to three per cent. The root cause is alcohol consumption.”

“The alcohol addiction which is one of the non-infectious diseases, increased around 2.5 fold, from 2013 to 2018. It becomes a health problem for the country. Due to alcohol consumption, there are quarrels and traffic accidents. The alcohol problem accounts for more than five per cent of the various kinds of deaths in the globe. One in seven deaths aged between 20 and 30 is linked to alcohol consumption,” he added. 

More than 3.3 million population die of alcohol consumption in the globe including Myanmar every year, according to the WHO report in 2018. 

An estimated 41 million world population die of non-communicable diseases (NCD), accounting for around 71 per cent of the total death rates in the world. It is found that 15 million populations aged between 30 and 69 die of NCD. Eighty-five per cent of the untimely deaths are from the low-income developing countries. The major cause of deaths is linked to heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease and diabetes.