Drug treatment

County — the patient’s place of residence.

The Estonian Drug Treatment Register is a state register which is kept on the people who have started drug treatment. Before February 10th 2020 the register was named as The Drug Treatment Database, and it started work on January 1st 2008.

Collection and processing of data about these people is necessary for getting an overview on occurrence of mental and behavioural disorders related to drug use, as well as for organising of relevant health services and planning of drug abuse preventive actions. Drug treatment database was anonymous national database before February 10th 2020, since then register is personalized, which collects data of the drug treatment patients. Register contains the data describing the socio-demographic variables, diagnoses, data describing drug use, risk behavior and treatment.

Psychiatric care providers in Estonia present data to the database if they are turned to by a patient who is diagnosed with a mental and behavioural disorder due to drug use (ICD-10 codes F11–F16, F18–F19).

Until 2017, the data of the drug treatment database must be treated with reservations, because due to the outdated IT solution of the database, there were shorter and longer interruptions in the operation of the database work, which reduced the number of data providers and thus the number of records. In addition, non-personalized data were not of sufficiently high quality and efficiency to motivate the submission of data. Therefore, in the period 2014-2017, fewer records reached the database from year to year.

Issuing and publishing of data: on the basis of the database's data, an annual overview is compiled, giving information about drug addicts who have turned to drug treatment in the previous calendar year, about provided health service, the patients' socio-demographic background, diagnoses, data describing drug use and risk behavior.

The data on the Drug Treatment Register are also submitted to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Classification of Estonian administrative units and settlements (EHAK)
Classification is used to provide regional statistics. Until 2017, data by the counties is distributed by the administrative division that existed before administrative reform (October 2017). This classification system is available on the webpage of the Statistics Estonia in the Classifications section.

International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10)
ICD-10 is used for coding diagnoses in morbidity and causes of death. The classification system is available on the webpage of the World Health Organization.

Drug Treatment Register

National Institute for Health Development

E-mail: naris[at]tai.ee

Updated: 19.10.2023