Photo: Man in full intoxication, via dts news agency
Bremen (dts news agency) – In Bremen and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania there are significantly more alcoholic people than the national average. This is the result of an evaluation by the Institute for Health System Research of the Barmer Krankenkasse, which the newspapers of the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” report on in their Sunday editions.
According to this, doctors diagnosed alcohol dependency in 21 in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in Bremen even in 22 per 1,000 people last year. The proportion is over 50 percent higher than the national average, which is 14 alcoholics per 1,000 people. It is noticeable that the rate is comparatively high in all eastern German states. In Saxony 19 per 1,000 people are affected, in Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia 17 per 1,000. In addition to Bremen, the front runners in the west are Hamburg (18 per 1,000) and Schleswig-Holstein (17 per 1,000). This is followed by Lower Saxony (14), Bavaria (13), as well as North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Saarland, each with twelve per 1,000 people. The lowest proportion of alcoholics was in Rhineland-Palatinate with eleven per 1,000 people. “The massive regional differences in alcohol addiction cannot be explained from a purely medical point of view. Sociodemographic factors are likely to play a role here, ”said an expert from the health insurance company to the RND. As the Barmer analysis also shows, a total of 820,000 men and 329,000 women in Germany were proven to be dependent on alcohol last year.
It mainly affects people in the second half of life. Among the 55 to 60-year-old men, around 131,000 were most recently alcohol-dependent and just under 51,000 were women in the same age group. “Alcoholism usually manifests itself over many years and occurs mainly in the baby boomer generation of the 50s and 60s,” says the insurance company. At that time, alcohol had a different status.
Today, however, the risks are much more in the foreground in society. Nonetheless, the number of people diagnosed with alcohol dependence has risen from 1.09 to 1.15 million over the past five years, with a minimal decrease from 2019 to 2020. This can presumably be traced back to the corona pandemic and the fact that fewer people have sought medical help. As a result, some cases went undetected, emphasized the Barmer doctor.
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