Soaring numbers of children, young people and pensioners in England are being taken to hospital after suffering serious mental disorders as a result of taking drugs, NHS figures reveal.

Hospitals are treating more than double the number of people for what the NHS calls “drug-related mental and behavioural disorders” than they did 10 years ago.

The statistics record damaging changes to people’s mental states as a result of taking illicit drugs, such as cannabis and cocaine, and also from the use of painkillers, alcohol and solvents.

Victims have needed urgent medical attention for acute intoxication due to drugs, and symptoms of both dependence and withdrawal from them, as well as psychotic disorders and amnesia caused by taking them. The numbers also include people who are delirious or exhibiting other signs of harmful effects of drug taking.

The latest data on people treated because of drug misuse, issued by NHS Digital, the health service’s statistical arm, shows that in 2016-17 hospitals in England admitted 82,135 people of all ages for these types of problems. That was 115% more than the 38,170 they treated as inpatients for such episodes in 2006-07.

The biggest rise has been been among people in the decade after retirement. The number of 65- to 74-year-olds has soared by 502% over that time, from 232 in 2006-07 to 1,397 in 2016-17. Numbers were also up among those aged 75 and over, from 183 to 559 – a rise of 205%.



Harry Shapiro, director of DrugWise, a drugs information charity, said the rises could be due to growing numbers of older people taking prescribed drugs to combat loneliness and depression.

“It’s most unlikely that recreational drug use figures much among over-65s, so we must assume that these are probably psychiatric drugs of some description. That would chime with the significant rise in the number of prescriptions for antidepressants and also the continuing large-scale prescribing of tranquilisers.

“In the ageing population there is much loneliness, isolation and depression, and there is the NHS’s inability to deal with this – for example, in relation to the amount of time a GP can spend with any one patient,” added Shapiro.

The number of under-16s has almost doubled, from 402 to 799, over the past decade. And there has also been a sharp rise among those aged 16 to 24. Numbers in that age group have increased from 6,983 to 12,369 – a rise of 77%.

Young people’s growing use of MDMA (ecstasy) is a key factor behind the growing number of people being treated in hospital, especially given that the tablets are often stronger than before, Shapiro said. Use of substances formerly known as “legal highs”, such as Spice and mephedrone – which became illegal in 2016 after an outcry over the harm they were causing – is also likely to explain the rise.

“These shocking statistics epitomise this government’s appalling failure to support the most vulnerable groups in society, the young and the old,” said Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary.

“The Tories continue to dismantle public health provision nationwide to devastating effect. Over the past year Theresa May’s government has presided over staggering cuts to addiction budgets to the tune of £43m. These callous and short-sighted cuts are resulting in growing addiction problems across society, with increased long-term costs for our health and care services.”

Prof Colin Drummond, chair of the addictions faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “The increase in drug-related hospital admissions over the last decade is concerning and mirrors the rising alcohol-related hospital admissions, which have doubled over the same period.”

However, the trend revealed by NHS Digital’s figures, and the record levels of heroin and morphine-related deaths being seen in England, have occurred at the same time as both drug and alcohol use in the general population have been falling, he added.

Government policy, which has led to local councils cutting drug addiction services when their public health budgets have been reduced, is “a false economy”, said Drummond, who is also professor of addiction psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London.