Revealed: Lethal toll of ‘wine o’clock’ on women
Death rates for the early-60s are up more than a third
The ‘wine o’clock’ habit has begun to take a deadly toll on the babyboomer generation of women, stark new figures showed yesterday.
They revealed that the likelihood of a woman in her early 60s dying from drink has shot up by more than a third since the turn of the millennium.
Death rates from alcohol among middleaged women have risen much faster than those of men of the same age – and they suggest that women who have turned to sauvignon and prosecco to cope with the pressures of modern life are now paying the price.
Last year, according to a report from the Office for national Statistics, 18.9 in every 100,000 women aged between 60 and 64 died from causes directly attributable to alcohol, up from 14 in every 100,000 in 2001.
Although more men in the age group were dying of drink, male death rates rose by less than 25 per cent compared to the 35 per cent female increase.
There was a 30 per cent increase in alcohol deaths among women in their late 50s. And while the chances of a man dying from drink in his early 50s fell between 2001 and 2016, for women they went up.
While numbers of older men dying due to drinking have also been rising quickly, the main impact on men is being felt by pensioners over the age of 70.
A second report on the toll of alcohol, produced yesterday by Public health england, said that over the three years between 2014 and 2016, deaths among women directly caused by alcohol rose by 2.4 per cent, and among men by only 1.9 per cent.
The OnS called the increase in deaths among women in their early 60s ‘ notable’ and added: ‘The increases in the stated age groups may be a consequence of the misuse of alcohol that began several years, or even decades, previously.’
Alcohol addiction specialist Dr niall Campbell, based at the Priory Group’s hospital in Roehampton, south west London, said: ‘ More older women than ever are drinking – and drinking hard. I see an increasing number of women whose drinking has had devastating effects on their physical and mental health, and relationships. Sometimes women are self-medicating with alcohol for stress – from looking after ageing parents, and debt-ridden adult children who have returned to the family home, while all the time holding down an exhausting paid job.
‘I commonly hear phrases like “wine o’clock”, where women in their thirties and forties are turning to wine or prosecco in the early evening to relax and keep on drinking.’
The OnS figures said that overall there were 7,327 alcohol-specific deaths in Britain in 2016, 11.7 people for every 100,000 in the population.
Among them, 340 women aged between 60 and 64 died directly due to their alcohol consumption, a figure up from 206 in 2001.
But in all age groups, men remained more than twice as likely to die of drink than women, and there were more alcohol deaths in the north of england than in the South.
Death rates from alcohol have been falling in Scotland, by 21 per cent among men since 2001, but are still more than double rates of alcohol deaths in england. however the OnS acknowledged that its figures underestimate the real toll because they count only direct alcohol deaths – and not those caused by diseases such as hepatitis, fibrosis and cirrhosis of the liver, to which alcohol is a major contributor.
The Public health england figures yesterday showed there were 24,000 deaths in england ‘attributed to alcohol’ last year, up 1.3 per cent on 2015. It said there were 18,425 deaths from chronic liver disease between 2014 and 2016, with deaths among men up by 3.1 per cent over the previous three years – and deaths among women up by 4.7 per cent.
‘Devastating effect on health’