Problem Drinking Led to Millions of Missed Workdays
MONDAY, March 21, 2022 (HealthDay News), The alcohol problem resulted in more than 232 million workdays a year missing in the United States before the pandemic. A new study says that the situation has likely worsened as more people worked from home. “Alcohol use disorder is a major problem in the United States and a big problem in many workplaces. It contributes to many missed workdays,” said senior researcher Dr. Laura Bierut, professor of psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis. “The problem seems to have gotten worse during the pandemic, and we need to try to do more so that people can get the help they need to treat alcohol use disorders,” she said.
Bierut said there is an economic incentive for employers and politicians to address the issue.
For the new study, her team analyzed data from more than 110,000 full-time American adults who participated in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2015 to 2019.
11 million full-time workers nationwide
Just over 9%, corresponding to nearly 11 million full-time workers nationwide. Met the criteria for alcohol use disorder, defined as the inability to stop or control alcohol use despite harming social life, work, or health.
While people with an alcohol use disorder accounted for about 9.3% of study participants, they accounted for 14.1% of the total absenteeism.
People with severe alcohol use disorder missed 32 days of work each year due to illness, injury, or simply missing work, compared to nearly 18 days for those with mild alcohol use disorder and about 13 days for those with no disease.
In general, workers with alcohol use disorder missed more than 232 million workdays a year, according to results posted online on March 17 at JAMA open network.
Alcohol use disorder was more common among men, young adults, whites and Hispanics, and people with lower incomes.
“We specifically decided to stop analyzing the data a year before the pandemic to be more confident in our findings,” said first author Dr. Ian Parsley, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis.
If more people work from home, it could change the association’s researchers saw before the pandemic.
“The amount of alcohol drunk since people started working from home has just gone through the roof,” Petrsley said. “This is not something that will resolve itself even as we slowly emerge from this pandemic.”
More information
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
SOURCE: University of Washington press release, March 17, 2022
