Abstract

Alcohol consumption is a serious medical and social problem in Estonia.

AIM. To compare the prevalence of hazardous drinking in patients in family practice, associations with such drinking with age, sex, education, economic situation and employment of patients and diagnosis of depression during the past six months according to CIDI and the classification of DSM IV.

PATIENTS. 1094 consecutive patients from family practices. Depressive episode in the past six months was found in 142 (13%) patients.

METHODS. Alcohol use was defined by the WHO Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT). Hazardous use was defined  as an AUDIT score of 8 or more, which included some binge and involved dependent drinkers.

RESULTS. Of the 1071 persons who completed the AUDIT, 137 (12.5%) did not drink alcohol. Hazardous drinking was recorded in 87 (7.9%) and binge drinking in 39 (3.6%) cases. Younger age, male gender and depressive episode were signifi cantly associated with hazardous dr inking. The lack of association with education, employment and economic situation might be due to the variability of consecutive primary health care patients.

CONCLUSION. Hazardous drinking, which was revealed in almost in every tenth patient and even more frequently in the younger age group, was associated with depression.