Mental illness and Tobacco Use

Smoking is much more common in adults with mental illness than other adults

Smoking and mental illness

• Nicotine has mood-altering effects that put people with mental illness at higher risk for cigarette use and nicotine addiction.
• People with mental illness are more likely to have stressful living conditions, be low income, and lack access to health insurance, health care, and help quitting. All of these factors make it more challenging to quit.
• Evidence shows that there has been direct tobacco marketing to people with mental illness and other vulnerable groups of people.

Smokers who quit have immediate health benefits.

• Risk for a heart attack drops sharply just 1 year after quitting.
• After 2 to 5 years, the chance of stroke can fall to about the same as a nonsmoker's.
• Within 5 years of quitting, the chance of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and bladder is cut in half.
• Ten years after quitting smoking, the risk for dying from lung cancer drops by half.

Adults with mental illness who smoke want to and are able to quit.

• Like other smokers, smokers with mental illness are interested in quitting, are able to quit, and have a better chance of quitting successfully when they have access to proven stop-smoking treatments.
• With careful monitoring, quitting smoking does not interfere with treatments for mental illness and can be part of the treatment.
• People with mental illness face challenges in quitting smoking and may benefit from extra help to succeed in quitting. This can include more counseling as well as longer use or a combination of stop-smoking medicines.

More attention is needed to help people with mental illness quit smoking.

• Some mental health facilities still allow smoking.
• Some mental health facilities allow smoking as a reward for progress.
• Some mental health facilities now provide counseling and medicine to help smokers quit.