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| Smoking
& The Mentally Ill |
This Week's Blogs
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Nov. 21, 2000, MSNBC NEWS—
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People with diagnosable mental illness account for nearly
45 percent of the total cigarette market in the United
States, estimates a report from Harvard Medical School.
- THE STUDY, published in this week’s
Journal of the American Medical Association, said that could
be because the mentally ill are more vulnerable to tobacco
advertising or nicotine addiction. “We found that persons
with mental illness are about twice as likely to smoke as
other persons, a finding consistent with previous studies,”
said the Harvard report. The findings were based on data
from 4,411 people aged 15 to 54 questioned in a congressionally
mandated study of the prevalence of U.S. psychiatric disorders
conducted in 1991 and 1992. The report said it was the most
recent national data source available on mental illness
and smoking. The survey found that people with a mental
disorder had consumed approximately 44.3 percent of all
the cigarettes smoked by the nationally representative sample
in the previous 30 days.
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“Extrapolating our results to the U.S. population, we estimate
that persons with a diagnosable mental disorder ... consume
nearly half of all cigarettes smoked in the United States,”
the report said. “Our findings emphasize the importance
of focusing smoking prevention and cessation efforts on
the mentally ill.” The study defined mental illness broadly
— from major depression, bipolar disorder and panic disorder
to alcohol abuse, drug dependence and antisocial personality,
and covering such problems as schizophrenia and delusional
disorders. “Perhaps mental illness causes smoking by making
people more vulnerable to tobacco advertising or nicotine
addiction,” said Karen Lasser, lead author of the study.
“However, other studies have called the direction of causality
into question, suggesting that smoking may cause mental
illness and our findings are certainly compatible with that
as well.”
OTHER STUDIES -
A growing body of research is implicating cigarette use
as a cause of mental or emotional problems. A study in last
month’s Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy
of Pediatrics, reported that smoking may cause depression
in teen-agers. The researchers found that teens who smoked
were about four times more likely to develop symptoms of
depression than those who did not light up. And a study
published earlier this month in the Journal of the American
Medical Association found that teen smokers were prone to
anxiety disorders, including panic attacks and agoraphobia
(fear of going outside) during early adulthood. The researchers
of both studies theorize that nicotine may affect the central
nervous system. Additionally, a recent study in the American
Journal of Psychiatry found that smoking preceded the onset
of schizophrenia in the majority of people with schizophrenia
who smoked. The Harvard report said that about a third of
smokers with mental illness were able to quit and if they
were also abstaining from drugs and alcohol they had a cessation
rate comparable to smokers without mental illness — a finding
that should encourage them to try to stop.
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The
Choices You Make Today, Determine Your Tomorrow,
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Choose
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Karen Dougherty MS -
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