Research presented at an international alcohol conference recently claims that adults over the age of 50 in Australia and New Zealand are increasingly drinking at hazardous levels and requiring hospitalisation.
The researchers from Massey University, the University of Auckland and the University of New South Wales found that now it’s vital for aged-care workers and doctors to identify alcohol misuse in older people, and the long term impacts on cognition.
The number of older people needing treatment for alcohol-use disorders is predicted to increase in the near future, so now is the time to improve our response, Professor Michael Farrell, the director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in Sydney explained.