New report reveals the health habits and problems of Europe

A new survey released today has highlighted some of the key health issues in Europe and the attitudes towards physical and mental health in 21 European countries.

The new European Social Survey (ESS) gathered 40,000 responses from across Europe during 2014-2015 and found that a large number of Europeans are suffering from a wide range of physical and mental health conditions.

One of the main findings was that women are more likely than men to suffer from depression and headaches.

Women in all 21 European countries reported more signs of depression than their male counterparts, with some of the largest discrepancies found in Portugal (30.9% of women compared to 15.8% of men); Poland (25.3% compared with 11.3%); Spain (24.7% compared with 12.8%) and Germany (20.2% compared with 9%).

Women in Germany, France and Portugal reported the highest levels of severe headaches.

Smoking also showed a significant gender gap, but this time with more men reporting smoking than women. Men in eastern and central Europe showed the highest levels of smoking with those in Lithuania (48.8%) the most likely to smoke, followed by Hungary (41.3%). Northern Europeans and those in the UK and Ireland recorded the lowest rates of smoking.

When looking at the number of male and female smokers together, Sweden has the least number of smokers -- under 15%. The figure is even more significant considering that the country previously had the highest rates in Europe with 77.8% of men and 76.2% of women recorded as smokers.

Men also consume almost twice as much alcohol as women throughout Europe, with the UK and Portugal coming out top for the highest binge drinking rates; Ireland also shows a high rate of alcohol consumption.

In addition to their lower rates of smoking, frequent binge drinking was also found to be rare amongst the Nordic countries.

Along with their drinking and smoking habits men were also more inclined to view themselves as overweight, being far more likely to report being overweight or obese than women in all 21 countries across Europe.

The team found that the highest levels of people who think of themselves as overweight or obese were reported amongst men in the Czech Republic (67.4%), Hungary (63.8%) and Slovenia (61.2%) with the lowest rates found amongst women in Switzerland (29.9%), Denmark and Austria (both 38.9%).

From the survey the authors concluded that promoting healthy lifestyles alone is not enough to reduce health problems, and suggest that this tactic should be supported by other methods such as income redistribution policies and improving physical working conditions.