Estimating prevalence of bereavement, its contribution to risk for binge drinking, and other high-risk health states in a state population survey, 2019 Georgia Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey

Abstract

Background: This report examines the cross-sectional association between new bereavement and binge drinking. Bingeing is defined as 4 or more drinks (women) or 5 or more drinks (men) in a 2-to-4-hour setting. In the 2019 Georgia Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS), bereavement is a defined as a ‘Yes’ answer to ‘Have you experienced the death of a family member or close friend in the years 2018 or 2019?’. Methods: Georgia BRFSS is a complex sampling survey administered annually. It is designed to represent the 8.1 million persons in the U.S. state of Georgia aged 18 years and older. Alcohol consumption is routinely measured in the common core. In 2019, the state added a new item probing for bereavement in the prior 24 months predating the pandemic of COVID-19. Imputation and weighting techniques were applied to yield population prevalence rates of new bereavement, bingeing, and their co-occurrence with other high-risk health states. Models, adjusted for age, gender, and race were used to estimate the risk for other unhealthy behaviors posed by the co-occurrence of bereavement and bingeing. Results: In Georgia, bereavement is common (45.8 %), and alcohol consumption is common (48.8 %). Bereavement and alcohol use co-occurred among 1,796,817 persons (45 % of all drinkers). The subset of co-occurring bereavement and binging totaled 608,282 persons. Within this group, the highest rates of bereavement were associated with death of a friend / neighbor (30.7%) or 3 plus deaths (31.8%). Conclusions: While bingeing is a known risk to public health, its co-occurrence with new bereavement is a new observation. Public health surveillance systems need to monitor this co-occurrence to protect both individual and societal health.