Restoration & clarity

– toward being better

Key Statistics Dashboard

A snapshot of published data on mental health and substance use in Zambia, compiled from peer-reviewed research and official reports. This page presents the key figures available today; a fully interactive, filterable dashboard is planned for a future phase of the Wellness Portal.

📊 National Snapshot

  • Zambia has one national psychiatric hospital – Chainama Hills College Hospital in Lusaka – with 500 beds (380 general adult, 120 forensic). Smaller psychiatric annexes exist at provincial hospitals in Ndola, Mansa, Kasama, Kabwe, Chipata, Mongu and Livingstone.
  • Mental health receives an estimated 0.38% of the national health budget.
  • The outdated 1951 Mental Disorders Act was replaced by a revised Mental Health Act in 2019, though implementation of rights-based, community-centred care remains at an early stage.
  • Zambia continues to face a severe shortage of specialist mental health workers relative to its population of over 20 million, with care largely delivered by psychiatric clinical officers and nurses rather than psychiatrists or psychologists.

🧠 Prevalence & Burden – Adults

  • 16.9% of the general population reported mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic period (Nov 2020 – Feb 2021), with a higher prevalence among women.
  • 8.5% of adults reported suicidal behaviour in the past 12 months (7.8% ideation, 3.6% a plan, 1.1% an attempt); 2.3% reported ever attempting suicide, in a national population-based sample.
  • Harmful alcohol consumption is more prevalent among men, while suicidal behaviour is more prevalent among women, according to national survey data.

🧒 Adolescents

  • Nearly a third of adolescents (29.7%) report depressive symptoms.
  • 45.1% of adolescents report problematic drinking and 37.2% report cannabis use.
  • 31-32% of adolescents report suicidal ideation, and 39.6% report suicidal behaviour in the past 12 months.
  • Comparative reviews of school-based survey data across Africa found Zambia has the highest reported adolescent binge-drinking rate of 23 African countries surveyed, and the highest youth suicidal ideation among 49 low- and middle-income countries compared.

🌍 Global & Regional Drug Trends (UNODC World Drug Report 2026)

Zambia-specific drug-use data is limited, so we draw on the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report 2026 for the global and African regional context behind our national picture.

  • 331 million people used drugs in 2024 (6.2% of the population aged 15–64, up from 5.2% in 2014) — 34% more people than a decade ago. Cannabis remains the most used drug by far (256 million users), followed by opioids (63 million), amphetamines (32 million), cocaine (25 million) and “ecstasy” (21 million).
  • The treatment gap is severe and worse in Africa: globally, only 1 in 12 people with a drug use disorder (8.2%) received any drug-related treatment in 2024 — and access is even lower for women and in Africa and Asia.
  • Africa has one of the youngest treatment populations in the world: 34% of people in drug treatment in Africa are under 25, the second-highest share of any region after South America (49%) — a strong signal that young people carry a disproportionate share of the burden.
  • Methamphetamine has been spreading across Africa: manufacture began in Southern Africa in the early 2000s, took root in West Africa (notably Nigeria) in the early 2010s, and is now emerging in East Africa too. One study estimated around 220,000 people used methamphetamine daily in South Africa alone in 2020.
  • Cocaine’s footprint in the region is growing: Southern Africa (particularly South Africa) has had a domestic cocaine market since the early 1990s, now fed by direct maritime trafficking from South America; East, West and Central Africa are also seeing rising treatment demand, including for “crack” cocaine.
  • Nearly 500,000 people died from drug use in 2023 — 29% more than a decade ago, underscoring that, at its core, this remains a public-health and human crisis, not only a security one.

Source: UNODC, World Drug Report 2026 (Highlights, Special Points of Interest, and the thematic chapter on the Impact of Drug Use on Safety and Security).

📚 Sources

Have more recent or localised data to contribute? We would love to include it. Please get in touch.

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