and Podkarpackie province; Spain: Catalonia autonomous community). In Hungary and Spain, all patients with GP assessment were interviewed. In the remaining countries, patients were selected for interview either randomly or based on stratification (oversampling AUDs cases as judged by the GP), with an overall patient refusal rate of 17.8 %. Ethical approval was obtained in each of the participating countries and the respective reference numbers are shown in Additional file 1: Table S1 as Additional file.
