Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), 33 Ursula Franklin Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2S1, Canada.
Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Bull World Health Organ. 2024 Jun 1;102(6):448-452. doi: 10.2471/BLT.24.291338. Epub 2024 Apr 30.
Just under 2.5 million people die annually due to alcohol use. This global estimate, however, excludes most of the health burden borne by others than the alcohol user. Alcohol's harm to others includes a multitude of conditions, such as trauma from traffic crashes, fetal disorders due to prenatal exposure to alcohol, as well as interpersonal and intimate partner violence. While alcohol's causal role in these conditions is well-established, alcohol's harm to others' contribution to the overall health burden of alcohol remains unknown. This knowledge gap leads to a situation in which alcohol policy and prevention strategies largely focus on the reduction of alcohol's detrimental health harms on the alcohol users, neglecting affected others and population groups most vulnerable to these harms, including women and children. In this article, we seek to elucidate why estimates for alcohol's harm to others are lacking and offer guidance for future research. We also argue that a full assessment of the alcohol health burden that includes the harm caused by others' alcohol use would enhance the visibility and public awareness of such harms, and advancing the evaluation of policy interventions to mitigate them.
每年有近 250 万人因饮酒而死亡。然而，这一全球估计数并未包括除饮酒者以外的人群所承受的大部分健康负担。酒精对他人造成的伤害包括多种情况，例如交通事故造成的创伤、胎儿在产前接触酒精导致的疾病，以及人际间和伴侣间暴力行为。尽管酒精在这些情况下的因果关系已得到充分证实，但酒精对他人的伤害对酒精造成的总体健康负担的影响仍不清楚。这一知识空白导致了这样一种情况，即酒精政策和预防策略主要侧重于减少酒精对饮酒者的健康危害，而忽视了受这些危害影响最大的其他人以及最易受这些危害影响的人群，包括妇女和儿童。在本文中，我们试图阐明为什么缺乏对他人因酒精而受到的伤害的估计，并为未来的研究提供指导。我们还认为，全面评估包括他人饮酒造成的伤害在内的酒精对健康的负担，将提高这些伤害的可见度和公众意识，并推动评估减轻这些伤害的政策干预措施。
