Trends in psychiatric hospitalization for alcohol and drugs in Castilla y León between 2005 and 2015.

It has been estimated that alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs were responsible for more than 10 million deaths worldwide in 2016, and there are many opportunities for improvement. Regarding innovative data analysis, advances have been made in the extraction of information from administrative databases for analytics purposes. We studied trends in hospitalization rates for alcohol and drug abuse over eleven years with Joinpoint Trend Analysis software. This is a descriptive study of cross-associations in 3,758 hospital admissions of patients admitted with a main diagnosis of alcohol and drug abuse or dependence in psychiatry units of public health centres of Castilla y León (Spain) between 2005 and 2015. Hospitalization trends for alcohol and drug related conditions declined over the eleven-year period. Separately, there was a statistically significant decrease in alcohol and cocaine related conditions, but a strong upward trend in cannabis related conditions between 2013 and 2015. Alcohol was the main cause of admission to psychiatric units with a diagnosis of addiction. In the 11 years researched, there was a progressive and constant reduction in admissions for substance use except for cannabis. The innovative statistical methodology has already proven to be useful for identifying trends and changes in different pathologies over time.