Under The Influence

Global Alcohol Consumption

What is the alcohol consumption for each country
and what are the percentage of people drinking?

Global Consumption

The visualization on the right shows global alcohol consumption (liter of pure alcohol) per person in 2016. The average consumption globally is 6.4 liters, as marked in Chart 1.

Why some contries have high consumption rate while others are remarkably low? What's the commonalities among the countries?

Hover the country tabs below and observe on the map.

Low Rate:
High Rate:

Explore Categories

We have included different categories for you to explore. The change will be reflected in the map and the bar charts. Hover Me to Learn More.

Explore the map and the visualizations by changing the drop-down selection.

From Chart 2, ranked by heavy drinking and never drink, we can learn that for religious reasons, Middle Eastern countries like Iran, North African countries like Libya, and South East Asian countries like Indonesia have remarkably low consumption rate. Wet drinking culture (alcohol is integrated in life) countries have high intake rate, such as Germany, Ireland, and France.

Global Consumption Trend

How does the global alcohol consumption change over the years?

Global Trend

What does the alcohol consumption trend look like over the years? Does it go up or down, or different countries have different trend?

In the coordinates on the left, the line represents the trend for the US from 1960 to 1980.

Draw the rest of the US's consumption trend to your estimate! When you are ready, click "Show Actual".

Reasons for Consumption

Why do people drink alcohol? What are the social-economical reasons?

Social Reasons

• Improve feelings in social occasions:
Alcohol triggers the release of endorphins - chemicals that produces feelings of pleasure, so drinking can make social situation more lively and fun.

• Peer pressure & Social Norms:
Alcohol is used at specific events and regular times and the consumption is often a behavioral expectation. Peer pressure is one of the most prominent reasons. Read More
Emotional Reasons

• Stress relieve:
Alcohol is a sedative and a depressant that affects the central nervous system. It can reduce fears and take people's mind off of your troubles.

• Coping with negative emotions:
Alcohol can help alleviate negative feelings for certain people, especially people who are experiencing aversive psychological symptoms.
Personal Background

• Culture, Religion, Family History:
Those factors can directly linking to if the person drinks alcohol. Many Muslims consider alcohol "haram" (sinful) so Muslim-majority countries tend to have lower consumption rate. Spending time around people who drink heavily or abuse alcohol can influence people to do the same.

• Financial and Work Status:
Financial factors such as taxation makes drinking less attractive.
Environment

• Change of Environment:
Moving, change of job, or any change of environment can lead to drinking which can help the person feel more in control. Read More

• Accessibility of Alcohol:
People tend to buy more alcohol when there's a higher accessibility.

Health Impacts from Alcohol

How much impact and damages can alcohol make to your body?

Health Impact

The impact on physical and mental health attributed to alcohol can be significant. The visualization shows the health conditions attributed to alcohol. The bar represents the corresponding death number caused by alcohol for that condition per 1,000,000 people, and highlights the top deaths.

We can see multiple organs can be damaged by alcohol intake, and it can eventually lead to the development of cancer. In addition, alcohol could lead to injuries, accidents, and suicide due to its mood-altering effect.

Click the condition names to show detail.

Condition Mortalities

By calculating using "Alcohol-attributable fraction" and the number of total death per 1,000,000 people from Alcohol-Related Disease Impact, we created this ranking chart on the left.

Arrhythmia or supraventricular cardiac dysrrhythmia has the highest death number resulted from alcohol. Additionally, traffic crash, homicide and suicide are high on the rank as well.

Hover over the graph to see detail.

Alcohol Use Disorder

What is AUD and who are likely to become the victims of AUD?

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) or commonly known as Alcoholism, is a chronic relapsing brain disorder characterized by an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse social, occupational, or health consequences.

AUD Demography

If the grid on the left represents the U.S.A. alcohol consumption in 2018 . . .

Continue scrolling to reveal the visualizations.

Prevalence

About 26.5% of adults in the US suffer from binged alcohol use, 6.6% of adults in the US suffer from heavy alcohol use, and 5.8% of adults in the US suffer from alcohol use disorder.

Alcohol Abuse Breakdown:

No indication of alcohol abuse
Binged Alcohol Use
Heavy Alcohol Use
Alcohol Use Disorder

Keep scrolling to view mappings within AUD population

Across Age

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) affects people of all ages. Working-age adults more predominantly report having AUD.

Age Mapping within Alcohol Use Disorder Population

Age 12-17
Age 18-25
Age 26-49
Age 50+

Gender

Men tend to suffer disproportionately from AUD. According to researchers at Harvard Medical School, men are more susceptible to addiction. They are more likely to abuse substances due to peer pressure. However, women are more likely to go to the emergency room or fatally overdose due to substance abuse. [link].

Gender Identity within Alcohol Use Disorder Population

Male
Female

Treatment

Only around 16% of people from the surveyed population diagnosed with AUD received any form of specialized treatment for AUD. Possibly, those who suffer from the disorder do not know how or where to get treatment. Moreover, they might not want to be associated with the negative stigma of having the disorder.

Received Treatment within Alcohol Use Disorder Population

Received treatment
Did not receive treatment

Avenue for Recovery and Treatment

You can help! According to the survey, 60.6% of people who sought AUD treatment chose Self-help groups as their avenue for treatment.

Treatment via self-help groups tends to be more economical than other forms of treatment. This finding is encouraging since we can help our loved ones through their recovery journey by providing support, a sense of community and belonging, and empathy! [link]

Avenue for Treatment within AUD Treated Population

Others
Self-Help Group

AUD and Mental Health

How does mental health condition contribute to the consumption of alcohol and AUD?

We will now explore mental health disorders as a risk factor for alcohol dependency or abuse. The values in this chart represents an increased risk of developing alcohol dependency or abuse in individuals with a given mental health disorder relative to those without.

For example, a value of 3.2 for PTSD, would indicate that individuals with PTSD are 3.2 times as likely to develop alcohol dependency relative to those without.

Prevention

Research shows that preventions is just as important, if not more important, than treatment.

Thus, if you know someone who currently have any of these mental health disorder, be on the look out for any development of AUD!

Hover over each mental health disorder to learn more.

Diagnose and Solutions

Do you feel like you or your loved one might have AUD?

Perform a self diagnose following the guide below or ask a medical professional for accurate diagnose and treatment:

Professional Diagnose

Professional health care is often in a better position to accurately diagnose the problem, design treatment plans and refer you to the right mental health professionals.

Project Information

Project Team

Veronica Peitong Chen

Harvard Graduate School of Design
Master of Architecture
Master of Design Technology
Nina Chen

Harvard College
Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science
Statistics Minor
Tiange Wang

Harvard Graduate School of Design
Master of Architecture

Information

Harvard CS171 - Data Visualization
Final Project
TF: Yalong Yang

Process Book

A pattern of dangerous alcohol use for mood-altering purposes can lead to dependency and physical harm and has led to countless family tragedies. Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and alcohol abuse have been a severe global problem. Millions of people die from it each year.

Using stories and research data from WHO and IHME, the project visualizes the issue's graveness through different lenses and perspectives and equips the audience with useful countermeasures and knowledge.

References

Hannah Ritchie (2018) - "Alcohol Consumption". Published online at OurWorldInData.org.

WHO - "The ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders".

WHO - "Global Health Observation".

Institute of Health Metrics & Evaluation (IHME) - "Global Burden of Disease (GBD)".

Leif I.Solberg MD, Michael V.Maciosek PhD, Nichol M.Edwards MS - "Primary Care Intervention to Reduce Alcohol Misuse: Ranking Its Health Impact and Cost Effectiveness".

Country Health Rankings and Roadmaps - "Alcohol and Drug Use".

SAMHSA - "Results from the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health".

Stock Images: Unsplash.

For those above the drinking age, who doesn’t want to enjoy a glass of wine or a bottle of beer from time to time? However, over-drinking and AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder) have become a global epidemic.

To understand the issue better, we will start by exploring global alcohol consumption.

Global Alcohol Consumption

What is the alcohol consumption for each country and what are the percentage of people drinking?

Global Consumption

Explore Categories

Global Consumption Trend

How does the global alcohol consumption change over the years?

Global Trend

Alcohol consumption is prevalent globally; however, regional differences play a big part in the consumption rate. Now let’s take a look at the U.S. data.

US Regional Differences

How does geography or city locations impact the consumption distribution?

All States

We have seen how prevalent alcohol consumption is globally and the regional differences. Let’s now delve into the reasons that people consume alcohol.

Reasons for Consumption

Why do people drink alcohol? What are the social-economical reasons?

Social Reasons

Emotional Reasons

Personal Background

Environment

There are multiple reasons for people choose to consume alcohol. Yet, unregulated drinking can lead to Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), permanent health complications, and even death.

Health Impacts from Alcohol

How much impact and damages can alcohol make to your body?

Health Impact

Condition Mortalities

Death

How much death does alcohol cause world wide?

nRisk factors for death

Worldwide

Victims Stories

What's the stories of the people with the detrimental habit?

The risks of drinking alcohol is frightening. A group of people that are subjected to those damages exponentially are the people who are suffering from Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD).

Alcohol Use Disorder

What is AUD and who are likely to become the victims of AUD?

AUD Demography

Prevalence

Across Age

Gender

Treatment

Avenue for Recovery and Treatment

AUD and Mental Health

How does mental health condition contribute to the consumption of alcohol and AUD?

Prevention

Recovery Stories

"I had to change – or else I’d die."

Diagnose and Solutions

Do you feel like you or your loved one might have AUD?

Perform a self diagnose following the guide below or ask a medical professional for accurate diagnose and treatment:

Professional Diagnose

We hope that this data visualization project showed you something new or informative about alcohol consumption and its issues. Anyone could fall the victim to AUD. Make sure to use your best judgement and take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Project Information

Veronica Peitong Chen

Nina Chen

Tiange Wang

For those above the drinking age,
who doesn’t want to enjoy a glass of wine or a bottle of beer from time to time?

However, over-drinking and AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder)
have become a global epidemic.

To understand the issue better, we will start by exploring
global alcohol consumption.

What is the alcohol consumption for each country
and what are the percentage of people drinking?

Alcohol consumption is prevalent globally; however, regional differences play a big part in the consumption rate.

Now let’s take a look at the U.S. data.

We have seen how prevalent alcohol consumption is globally and the regional differences.
Let’s now delve into the reasons that people consume alcohol.

There are multiple reasons for people choose to consume alcohol.

Yet, unregulated drinking can lead to Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), permanent health complications, and even death.

The risks of drinking alcohol is frightening.

A group of people that are subjected to those damages exponentially are the people who are suffering from Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD).

We hope that this data visualization project showed you something new or informative about alcohol consumption and its issues.

Anyone could fall the victim to AUD. Make sure to use your best judgement and take care of yourself and your loved ones.