Russia sees increase in alcohol dependence diagnoses for first time in decade

Russia's Federal State Statistics Service, Rosstat, has recorded an increase in the number of Russians newly diagnosed with alcohol dependence for the first time in a decade, the newspaper Kommersant reported on Monday.

According to the agency’s report “Healthcare in Russia 2023,” which was published in late December, approximately 54,200 patients received the diagnosis in 2022, compared to about 53,000 in 2021. Before that, the number had fallen every year since 2010, when about 100,000 patients received the diagnosis.

Approximately 153,900 people with this diagnosis were reportedly put under regular medical observation in 2010, while that number that had fallen to 53,300 by 2021. Rosstat has not yet published data on the number of patients put under observation in 2023.

Experts who spoke to Kommersant attributed the increase in alcohol dependence to the COVID-19 pandemic, “socioeconomic shocks,” and an “intensification of geopolitical confrontations.”

In 2022, the Russian Health Ministry said that the number of alcohol poisoning deaths in the country decreased by more than 62 percent between 2008 and 2021. During the coronavirus pandemic, the ministry said, “the downward trend in alcohol consumption and mortality directly linked to alcohol was interrupted.”