Influence of the frequency of "drunken days" on physical and mental well-being of alcohol users

Abstract

The goal of the work is to study the relationship between the frequency of “drunken days” (DD) and indicators of the physical and mental well-being of the surveyed respondents. In four regions of Ukraine (Kharkiv, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as the city of Kyiv), 1742 people were examined during 2018—2021, who belonged to four comparison groups: patients with alcohol dependence (AD) (393 people); healthy relatives of AD patients (274 people); representatives of the general population comparable with the representatives of the first two age groups (334 people) and students of 3 and 4 courses of medical universities (741 people). The main research instruments were the questionnaire of the international research consortium GENAHTO (Gender, Alcohol, and Harms to Others), Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), as well as the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). The obtained data were processed by methods of mathematical statistics (variance, correlation and regression analysis) on a computer using Excel 2016 computational tables (with the Data Analysis package). It is shown that the dependence of indicators of physical and mental well-being on the frequency of DD has a non-linear nature, so that their main changes occur when going from two to five times alcohol consumption during the week. It was established that strict female teetotalers have lower self-assessments of their physical and mental health and, at the same time, higher life satisfaction indicators than strict male teetotalers. Such a combination of signs may indicate that the reasons that prevent such women from drinking alcohol are mainly related to their state of health (presence of somatic or mental disorders), while such men’s refusal to drink alcohol is as a result of their beliefs (in particular, religious ones), and not the state of health. Key words: physical and mental well-being, alcohol, frequency of use, regression analysis, gender differences