Drink until the ambulance comes?

In the second Corona year 2021, adolescents and young adults came to the hospital with severe alcohol intoxication less often than a year earlier.

However, the decline has weakened.

This emerges from data from the KKH commercial health insurance company in Hanover.

With around 1.6 million insured persons, the KKH is one of the largest nationwide statutory health insurers.

In 2021, 7.5 percent fewer young people between the ages of twelve and 18 came to a clinic with alcohol poisoning.

Among young men, the decline was 6.8 percent compared to the previous year, and among women of the same age it was 8.4 percent.

The most significant decline was in 2020: it was over 30 percent for both men and women.

According to health insurance projections, around 11,000 young people between the ages of 12 and 18 were hospitalized for acute alcohol intoxication in 2021.

A year earlier it was 12,000.

"This development is gratifying," said KKH psychologist Franziska Klemm.

"But it also shows that we must not let up on prevention, because alcohol consumption, especially in adolescence, is associated with particular risks for healthy development." For the study, the KKH evaluated anonymous data from around 111,000 insured persons between the ages of twelve and 18 the end.

Increase in outpatient treatments

However, the decline in admissions does not mean that young people have generally been drinking less alcohol since the pandemic.

Because: There was an increase in outpatient treatment of 12 to 18-year-olds for alcohol intoxication in 2021: by 18.7 percent for boys and young men and by 5.9 percent for girls and young women.

In 2020, the number of outpatient treatments fell massively compared to the previous year: by 17.8 percent for boys and young men and 24.5 percent for girls and young women.

One reason for the increase: there were more opportunities such as concerts or parties that had not existed during the lockdown phases at the beginning of the pandemic.

"When young people drink alcohol, curiosity, carelessness and peer pressure play a role," said Klemm.

Adolescents whose parents are divorcing, who are being bullied at school or are suffering from the consequences of the pandemic are particularly easy to influence: “Long-lasting crises are particularly stressful for young people.” If they see alcohol “as a fun driver or as a worry-eater”, it grows risk of addiction in adulthood.

In June, the Federal Center for Health Education announced that regular alcohol consumption among young people had fallen to its lowest level since records began in 2021.

Accordingly, 8.7 percent of 12 to 17 year olds said they drank alcohol at least once a week.

In 2011 it was 14 percent, and in the first survey in 1979 a quarter of those questioned.