The burden and cost of disorders of the brain in Europe with the inclusion of harmful alcohol use and nicotine addiction

Recent publications calculated an annual prevalence of 38% of the population within the European Union having a “disorder of the brain” including substance use disorders (SUD) (Wittchen et al., 2011). The overall economic burden was estimated at 789 billion € (Gustavsson et al., 2011). While these calculations included alcohol dependence, harmful use of alcohol, a common ICD-10 diagnosis,