Current status: Answered by Elena Whitham on 22 June 2023
To ask the Scottish Government how many people have accessed alcohol treatment services in each year since 1999, broken down by NHS board.
Data on the number of people accessing alcohol treatment services in Scotland is available from Public Health Scotland’s “National Drug and Alcohol Treatment Waiting Times” series of reports. It includes specific figures on the number of service users who have completed a wait to commence specialist alcohol treatment.
It is published by Public Health Scotland and covers the period from 01 April 2011 onwards as earlier data is not available.
The reports covering the period from April 2011 to September 2019 can be found via the URL link below:
https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/ .
The reports covering the period from October 2019 to December 2022 can be found via the URL link below:
https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/
Although the data is publicly available online, in order to answer the above question, it is necessary to combine extracts from multiple reports. Results have been presented in Table 1. Not all necessary data, however, is available to answer the question fully, which explains blank boxes in the table.
Table 1. Number of service users who have completed a wait to commence specialist alcohol treatment
Board | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 |
NHSScotland | 27595 | 28467 | 32556 | 31627 | 30373 | 29450 | 28061 | 26895 | 22725 | 19605 | 19617 |
Ayrshire & Arran | 1777 | 1568 | 1451 | 1353 | 1419 | 1359 | 1439 | 1146 | 1546 | ||
Borders | 431 | 399 | 381 | 387 | 298 | 312 | 283 | 278 | 310 | ||
Dumfries & Galloway | 922 | 882 | 916 | 795 | 858 | 693 | 745 | 738 | 918 | ||
Fife | 1635 | 1539 | 1604 | 1540 | 1375 | 1330 | 1448 | 1088 | 1092 | ||
Forth Valley | 1491 | 1423 | 1746 | 1425 | 1346 | 987 | 893 | 797 | 773 | ||
Grampian | 1761 | 1544 | 1616 | 1746 | 1477 | 1396 | 1455 | 1026 | 1214 | ||
Greater Glasgow & Clyde | 11895 | 11905 | 11027 | 11095 | 10648 | 10482 | 6622 | 5598 | 4901 | ||
Highland | 1531 | 1564 | 1315 | 1332 | 1131 | 1134 | 1059 | 869 | 735 | ||
Lanarkshire | 5727 | 6192 | 5475 | 5174 | 5159 | 5393 | 5062 | 4751 | 4789 | ||
Lothian | 3303 | 2964 | 3000 | 2960 | 2995 | 2544 | 2565 | 2154 | 2303 | ||
Orkney | 54 | 36 | 34 | 30 | 41 | 24 | 29 | 35 | 23 | ||
Shetland | 73 | 55 | 79 | 41 | 62 | 46 | 53 | 31 | 54 | ||
Tayside | 1651 | 1336 | 1482 | 1380 | 1110 | 970 | 945 | 995 | 912 | ||
Western Isles | 305 | 220 | 247 | 192 | 142 | 201 | 127 | 99 | 47 |