HEALTH-YUGOSLAVIA: Alcoholism on a High

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, May 21 2002 (IPS) - Alcoholism has reached alarmingly high levels among Serb women, new studies show.

The number of Serb women being treated as alcoholics has doubled since the eighties, says Petar Nastasic from the Belgrade Institute for Mental Health.

“We had a new phenomenon in the nineties, a dramatic rise of alcoholism among women,” says Dr Nastasic. “In the eighties, there was one woman treated for every two men at our centre,” says Nastasic. “Now, they equal the number of men.”

The rise in the number of alcoholic women has contributed significantly to the high incidence of alcoholism. A new survey by the Yugoslav Association for Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Addiction (JSPAN) shows that there are 300,000 registered alcoholics in Yugoslavia. Health workers believe that many more do not seek help.

In a country of 7.4 million, between 10 and 15 per cent of adult males are alcoholics, says Dr Dragoslav Nikolic, head of JSPAN. Recent trends indicate a similar incidence among women.

The young are following. In the JSPAN survey 54.7 per cent of teenagers polled admitted that they drink regularly when they go out, and 26.4 per cent said they drink occasionally. The survey indicates that as many as 6.5 per cent of teenagers show all the signs of alcoholism. Only 12.4 per cent said they do not drink at all.

The real number of people who suffer from the effects of alcoholism is at least four times higher, because it affects the lives of whole families, Nikolic says.

“People call alcoholism a vice, but experts know that it is a serious illness,” he says. “It is the biggest illness among people here.”

People drink at weddings, and in restaurants but also “at work and even at funerals,” he says. “Anything can be a reason for a drink. People usually do not see when the thin line is crossed and the occasional drink turns into necessity.”

Jasmina Veselinovic from the Family Therapy Centre in Belgrade says the difficult circumstances of the nineties became a breeding ground for alcoholism. “Men faced excessive and almost impossible challenges,” she says. “They were the first to face mass layoffs from idle factories and offices, and were expected to remain providers for their families. Unable to do so, they lost their self-respect and turned to drinking.”

Those who turned to drinking spent their sparse money on alcohol, at the expense of family members. Official figures show that 95 per cent of people lived below Yugoslavia’s poverty line through the nineties.

“The burdens of the everyday fight for survival in the awful circumstances were too heavy and many joined in,” says Dr Nastasic. Many women became alcoholics, and others suffered from the alcoholism of family members.

Yugoslavia lived through four wars and two rounds of international sanctions in the nineties during the rule of former leader Slobodan Milosevic. Once the most prosperous country of Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia was turned into an impoverished state.

The government seems in no hurry to tackle alcoholism as it seeks to rebuild the country. “No state, including this one, shows real willingness to fight alcoholism,” says Nastasic. “High taxes on alcohol bring money to the state and the lobby of the alcohol industry is too strong to be fought by medical experts.”