Alcohol related hospital statistics
Scotland financial year 2024 to 2025

About this release

This annual release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides statistics relating to inpatient or day case admissions (stays) that occur within NHS Scotland hospitals where the patient was recorded as having at least one condition that can be wholly attributed to alcohol. This release covers general acute hospital admissions for the financial years 1981/82 to 2024/25 and psychiatric hospital admissions from 1997/98 to 2024/25.

Please note that for this release, the 2023/24 and 2024/25 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD, see publication Metadata for more information) rates analysis figures are based on 2022 SIMD mid-year population estimates. 2023 and 2024 SIMD mid-year population estimates produced by National Records of Scotland were not available at the time of publication. When these become available the relevant analysis will be rerun and if a significant impact on the 2023/24 or 2024/25 figures is seen a planned revision of published statistics will be undertaken. In addition, for this release patients admitted during financial years 2012/13 and 2013/14 have been assigned to deprivation deciles based on SIMD 2012. Previous editions of this publication series assigned patients admitted during 2012/13 and 2013/14 to SIMD 2016. This methodological change has not resulted in any material changes to the underlying trends or commentary provided in previous publications. The dashboard for this publication can be found on the ‘Wholly Attributable Alcohol Hospital Statistics’ pages in the Alcohol Consumption and Harms Dashboard.

Main Points

• In 2024/25 there were 29,430 hospital admissions for conditions wholly attributable to alcohol in Scotland. The majority of these admissions (92%) were treated in general acute hospitals (27,126) with the remaining 8% occurring in psychiatric hospitals (2,304).
• In 2024/25, the European Age-sex Standardised Rate (EASR, see publication Metadata for more information) of hospital admissions to general acute hospitals for conditions wholly attributable to alcohol was 494 per 100,000 population and was 10% lower than the rate in 2023/24 (548 per 100,000).
• In 2024/25, males were 2.4 times more likely than females to be admitted to general acute hospitals for conditions wholly attributable to alcohol (699 per 100,000 population compared to 288 per 100,000 population).
• In 2024/25, people in the most deprived areas (782 patients per 100,000 population), as measured by SIMD, were seven times more likely to be admitted to general acute hospitals for conditions wholly attributable to alcohol than those in the least deprived areas (116 patients per 100,000 population).

Line graph of general acute hospitalisation rates for number of stays, number of patients, and number of new patients respectively by year.

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Rates (EASR) for conditions wholly attributable to alcohol, general acute hospitals, Scotland, 1981/82-2024/25

Background

Consumption of alcohol can result in a wide range of health problems. Some may occur after drinking over a relatively short period, such as acute intoxication (drunkenness) or poisoning (toxic effect). Others develop more gradually, such as damage to the liver and brain. Estimates of the number of inpatient and day case admissions are based on counts where conditions that are wholly attributable to alcohol are diagnosed during the hospital stay (see publication Metadata for more information).

Attendances at Accident and Emergency that do not result in an admission to hospital are not included in this release. Individuals may have more than one stay in hospital during a year, therefore the number of people admitted will be less than the total number of stays.

Data presented for 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 are provisional and subject to change in future publications as figures may be updated to reflect more complete data from NHS Boards.

Further Information

The next release of this publication will be Winter 2026/27.