'Wine o'clock' mentality sees number of women treated for alcoholism overtake men for first time
A “wine o'clock” mentality has seen the number of women treated for alcoholism overtake men for the first time, The Telegraph can reveal.
Carefully targeted advertising campaigns and an increase in ‘female-only’ drink brands have also been blamed for a surge in the number of women who require liver disease treatment.
New figures from The UK Addiction Treatment Group (UKAT) show that out of 1,729 alcohol-related admissions to its centres in 2020, 54 per cent of patients were female.
Women continued to outnumber men during the first four full months of 2021, the charity’s data show, accounting for 51 per cent of alcohol admissions in 2021 to date.
This comes in contrast to the first figures recorded by UKAT in 2014, when male admissions outnumbered female patients by 59 per cent to 41 per cent.
Nuno Albuquerque, the head of treatment at UKAT, said that marketing for wine and pink gin “specifically targets women over men”, which has made them more likely to become dependent.
“Lockdowns have not only made things worse with working from home, the impact of the lockdown on people’s mental health has also played a big part in the increasing numbers of women drinking,” he said.
“We encourage people to adopt healthier coping mechanisms, but many of these take a bit longer to have any effect. People are more inclined towards a quick fix and an immediate feeling of rest and relaxation, and the alcohol does that.”
“The problem is that if we do that every day we can run the risk of becoming dependent and that’s what happened with some of these women.”
The effects of alcoholism had led to some of Mr Alberqueue’s patients experiencing disrupted sleeping patterns and backing away from childcare duties among other responsibilities, he added.
The number of women needing appointments for alcohol-related liver disease has risen by almost two-thirds in the last decade, according to NHS Digital, while alcohol-specific deaths have also increased sharply.
Some 7,760 women were seen for the condition in 2019/20, up from 4,941 in 2010/11.
A major global study in the Lancet published in 2018 found that British women were among the biggest drinkers in the world and matched men drink-for-drink.
Growing rates of liver disease were most prevalent among middle-aged women who had continued the “ladette” drinking habits of their youth, researchers at the University of Washington said.
