The number of Australians accessing publicly funded drug and alcohol treatment programs remained steady as we entered the pandemic, with almost no change from 2019-20 through to 2020-21 according to the latest report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Despite COVID lockdowns seeing record sales in bottle-shops across the country, the Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia annual report 2020–21 surprisingly showed that some 139,000 people continued to access support.
Early in the pandemic, counselling saw a 12% increase in the number of treatment episodes, while rehabilitation – which often involves groups of people or requires specific settings – saw a drop of 29%.
AIHW spokesperson, Dr Gabrielle Phillips, explained that even though the delivery of specialised treatment services was severely impacted by the introduction of new COVID related health regulations, expanded online services helped to balance out the loss of rehabilitation treatments that had difficulty going virtual.
“While there have been changes in the settings and delivery models in response to public health measures, the number of people supported by publicly funded alcohol and other drug treatment services remained steady at 139,300 in 2020–21,” Dr Phillips said.
“COVID restrictions led to many treatment services adapting their practices by expanding access to online services and telehealth appointments.
“Of the 243,000 closed treatment episodes delivered throughout 2020–21, the most common were for counselling (38%), followed by assessments (20%).”
Just like in 2019-20, alcohol was the most common principal drug for which people received medical support across all states and territories, with only a slight (3%) increase in the number of people seeking treatment during the first year of the pandemic.
‘Alcohol has consistently been the most common drug clients received treatment for since the collection began,” Dr Phillips said.
“However, this has declined in relation to all other drugs, for example, from 46% in 2011–12 to 37% in 2020–21.”
The second most common drug treated was amphetamines, which accounted for a quarter of all treatment episodes in 2020–21 – yet following consistent growth from 2011–12 to 2019–20, the number of treatment episodes for amphetamines actually declined in 2020–21, down from 28%.
One in 5 treatment episodes were for cannabis (19%) – an increase of 1% on 2019-20 – while treatment for heroin continued to decline, from 5% to 4.6%.
“These four drugs accounted for 85% of all treatment episodes,’ Dr Phillips said.
Most people (93%) received treatment for their own drug or alcohol use, and the remainder received support for someone else’s drug or alcohol use.
Of those receiving treatment for their own drug or alcohol use, almost two-thirds (64%) were aged under 40, whereas those aged 40 and over made up almost half (48%) of people receiving treatment for someone else’s drug or alcohol use.