Since the start of the pandemic, substantial increases in mental health difficulties and growing substance abuse has been widely noted. The public continues to talk about elevated levels of depression and anxiety throughout the crisis. Research has revealed drastic increases in cases of drug overdose and other related deaths.
Additionally, alcohol consumption has increased considerably during COVID. National statistics show there was a 54% surge in national alcohol sales during just the first week of pandemic! Later reports indicate continual increases in those rates of alcohol intake. A survey-based study indicated that the frequency of alcohol consumption increased by 14% overall among US adults just between May to June 2020, when compared to the previous year.
Especially high increases were observed among women in terms of frequency (17% for women vs 11% for men) and days of heavy drinking (41% vs 7%). However, previous findings revealed increasing rates of alcohol use, abuse, and dependence, along with related consequences — including alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) — among women. Historically, ALD has had a higher prevalence in men compared with women. Now women “represent a rapidly growing subset of patients with alcohol-associated liver disease,” according to the April 2021 in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
The risk of developing ALD is now higher in women compared with men, across all levels of alcohol consumption. Women appear to develop liver disease with lesser alcohol exposure and suffer worse disease as compared with men. Rates of mortality, as related to ALD, do continue to remain higher in men, compared with women. But this gap has also narrowed in recent decades, especially among adults aged 25 to 34 years.