Teenage girls and alcohol abuse
More than 5,000 girls under the age of 16 needed hospital treatment last year after bingeing on alcohol.
The number, which includes girls as young as 10, has soared by 21 per cent in the past five years. The increase is even larger among older age groups. In 2007-08, just over 13,000 young women between 17 and 21 were admitted to hospital for problems caused by alcohol, up almost 50 per cent from 2003-04.
The increase highlights the problems of the growing ‘ladette culture’, which is seeing women being diagnosed with liver disease at a much younger age. But among women aged 26 or over there has been a similar rise. Almost 300,000 needed hospital treatment, compared with 196,625 five years earlier, up nearly 50 per cent.
The figures, quoted on the Mail Online (www.dailymail.co.uk), emerged in response to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Sally Keeble.
