•+Interesting+Facts


 * Up to 40 per cent of people who drink heavily have symptoms that resemble a depressive illness (Bayridge Anxiety & Depression Treatment Centre, 2007).
 * However, when these same people are not drinking heavily, only 5 per cent of men and 10 per cent of woman have symptoms meeting the diagnostic criteria for depression – not that different from the rates of depression in the general population (Bayridge Anxiety & Depression Treatment Centre, 2007).
 * About 5 to 10 per cent of people with a depressive illness also have symptoms of an alcohol problem (Bayridge Anxiety & Depression Treatment Centre, 2007).


 * Depression/anxiety continues to be Canada's fastest-rising diagnosis. From 1994 to 2004, visits for depression/anxiety made to office-based doctors almost doubled. In 2003, that meant 11.6 million visits to doctors across Canada about depression/anxiety (Bayridge Anxiety & Depression Treatment Centre, 2007).


 * About 16 percent of adults will experience depression/anxiety at some point in their life (Bayridge Anxiety & Depression Treatment Centre, 2007).


 * Up to four weeks of abstinence from alcohol is required to resolve alcohol-related changes and to determine whether alcohol is the cause of symptoms of major depression. Only 15-20 per cent of people with depressive symptoms who use alcohol continue to have these symptoms after four weeks of abstinence (Brown et al., 1995, as cited in CAMH, 2011).


 * “Evidence suggests that in men alcohol use precedes the depression, whereas in women the depression precedes the alcohol use” (Schimelpfening, 2012).


 * “The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that at least 25 percent of all emergency room admissions are direct results of mixing alcohol and medications" (Munson, 2012).


 * ====According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), about 7.6 percent of people over the age of 18 experience a major depressive episode in any given year. About 8 percent of adults experience a problem with alcohol in any given year. (Programs, 2012) Depression and alcoholism co-occur in about 1.2 percent of adults. That means about one out of eight depressed individuals have a problem with alcohol, and vice versa (Programs, 2012). ====