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Alcohol Misuse at Work – Are the Existing Services Able to Cope? Salter’s Psychiatric Review defines alcohol misuse as drinking intermittently or persistently to such an extent that it interferes with an employees health or performance (efficiency, productivity, safety or attendance) at work. This is the definition that will be used in this report, which will examine the effects of alcohol misuse in the workplace and the extent of the problem. Alcohol misuse in any environment is known to cause health problems, most notably it can lead to liver damage (e.g. cirrhosis), as well as problems with other systems of the body. However, in the workplace it causes the added problem of a derogatory effect on the economy and risk to employee health. It is thought that 1 in 5 accidents, and over 50% of fatal accidents in the workplace are alcohol related and over 8 million working days are lost from inappropriate drinking of alcohol1. In financial terms it has been calculated that the cost of sickness absence due to alcohol consumption was £779m in 1989 and the cost to the National Health Service (NHS) was estimated to be £120million2. A discussion with the project tutor revealed that research has shown that alcohol misuse has a tota