Published: May 15, 2009 02:33 pm      

Mental health care providers encouraged to help thwart smoking among patients in Clark County

State, national experts present at conference for health care providers

Smoking addictions are difficult to overcome for anyone, but for a person struggling with mental illness, it can be nearly impossible to stop without seeking help, according to experts.

Three guest speakers were at the Sheraton Louisville Riverside Hotel in Jeffersonville to educate area mental health professionals about ways to integrate smoking cessation into regular practice.

“Our being here is part of a statewide effort to educate mental health professionals on implementing effective tobacco cessation policies,” said Tom Lux Jr., project director for ReThink Tobacco with Mental Health America of Indiana.

Dr. Jill Williams, the director of the Division of Addiction Psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, was the keynote speaker for the conference.

“The mental health system hasn’t done enough,” Williams said.

She said that people with mental illness may struggle to cope with addictions. When the national movement began to encourage smokers to give up their addiction, people with mental illness were often left behind, Williams said. It may not be that someone with a mental health disorder is more likely to start smoking, but that they become addicted more easily, she said.

While smoking in the United States has decreased to about 25 percent of adults, the proportion people with psychiatric diagnoses who smoke has increased to 75 percent, according to the Clark County Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Coalition.

“It’s a coping strategy,” said Deborah Hudson, program manager for the Clarian Tobacco Control Center at theIndiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center in Indianapolis. “Most people use cigarettes as a coping mechanism for whatever life has handed them.”

Andi Hannah, with Clark County Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Coalition, said people with mental illness should seek out help from any health care provider. The idea is that people seeking help from a health care provider for mental illness also can receive help to stop smoking.

“The treatments may need to be more intensive if you have mental health problems,” Williams said.

She said that mental health professionals often are afraid to help mentally ill patients stop smoking because it might complicate things or cause more harm than good. In the past, she said, mentally ill patients have even been awarded with cigarettes for good behavior.

The experts say smoking actually does much greater harm. They said that people with schizophrenia spend one-third of their income on tobacco products, and some lose about 25 years of their life due to tobacco-related illness.

“They’re dying from smoking-related illness rather than from their mental illness,” Hannah said.

Williams said tobacco also can interact with the psychiatric medication in a negative way.

She said it also can cause the mentally ill to be further marginalized in society as the stigma associated with smoking grows.

The Indiana Tobacco Quitline can be accessed at 800-QUIT NOW.



SO YOU KNOW

• Individuals with mental illness or substance-abuse disorders make up about 7 percent of the population, but they consume about 40 percent of all cigarettes purchased in the United States.

• Some people with mental illness lose about 25 years of their life because of tobacco-related illness.

• About 25 percent of adults in the United States smoke, but the proportion of smokers with psychiatric diagnoses is about 75 percent.

• Schizophrenics spend one-third of their income on tobacco products.

— Clark County Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Coalition