The Link Between Smoking and Mental Health

Even though many people’s main reasonings behind quitting smoking might be more related to the physical harm it may bring, it is also important to note the fact that smoking has proven to be harmful for your mental health. Although the harmful effects on someone’s physical wellbeing are important, this aspect often fails to persuade people to quit smoking: what may be more influential upon their habits might be the realization that what is causing them so much stress and anxiety is what they are smoking and the effects that it is having on their brains.

It is a known fact, and widely accepted, that quitting smoking will improve your physical health, but few succeed in making the connection that it might improve their mental wellbeing as well. In fact, most smokers continue to smoke because they claim it relaxes and calms them down, which is a common misconception.

While the effects of nicotine may seem to be “relaxing” in some ways, it is not the cigarette or the smoking itself that is satisfying, but the sense of a craving being relieved. Nicotine, like many chemicals, is an addictive substance and interferes with certain chemicals in the brain. Further, when smokers haven’t had a cigarette in a while, they may feel a craving for another one, which is linked to irritation and anxiety. These feelings are relieved when another cigarette is consumed; yet, the anxious feelings may have been caused by the effects of smoking itself.

Studies show the effects that quitting smoking have on the brains of regular smokers: they have lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression; their moods and quality of life is improved; the dosage of some medicine used to treat mental health problems is, very often, reduced. Further, people with common mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia, are more likely to smoke than the rest of the general population. When they do smoke, they also tend to smoke more heavily and therefore have heavier consequences on their physical health as well. As they smoke more and smoke more heavily, the effects on their physical health are greater and they therefore have a lower life expectancy because of those issues.

The reason why people with anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia die on average 10 to 20 years earlier than those who don’t experience mental health problems is largely due to this link between smoking and mental health, as well as them being more avid smokers on average.

Nicotine is a very powerful drug, which is true for everyone: regardless of if they have mental illnesses or not. Tobacco use has been very perpetuated in the mental health community; many people with mental health problems smoke to mask symptoms or medication side effects, and may also be highly affected by the effects of nicotine withdrawal, which might make it harder to quit. For example, people with chronic panic attacks become even more prone to them when they go through the effects of nicotine withdrawal, in which anxiety and stress are very common symptoms.

Nicotine is also said to improve attention and focus, which might be appealing aspects for people with various different mental health issues; however, there are better coping mechanisms and strategies that do not include all of the physical and additional mental issues that come with smoking initiation.

Going further in the perpetuation of smoking in the mental health community, “psychiatric hospitals have a history of rewarding patients with cigarettes or outdoor smoke breaks for good behavior or medication compliance,” according to the American Psychological Association (APA). Additionally, many of these mental health patients express a large desire to quit; in fact, the rates at which mental health patients are quitting is higher than ever before, even with all of the side effects and symptoms that nicotine withdrawal brings and how often it may make their recovery feel impaired.

The effects of quitting smoking could also be very easily comparable to the effects of taking antidepressants when comparing them to the effect on one’s mental health and wellbeing.

There is still much work to be done on the safest and most tolerable way of quitting smoking, however. Much of the evidence points to the most effective treatment being those methods which are incorporated into other forms of mental health care. Smoking cessation was incorporated into a treatment for veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, and these patients showed higher success rates in quitting smoking than those who went through the same treatment seperate from the treatment of PTSD.

Tobacco cessation is important for everyone, but almost none of the systems and strategies that urge the public to do so are targeted towards this demographic of people, and mental health treatment ought to be more linked to the treatment of other mental health issues.

Although there are many reasons to quit smoking, perhaps the most persuasive reason might be the fact that it might relieve the many effects of other mental health issues, despite the even greater effects of nicotine withdrawal. So, if you want to, quit smoking. If not for the benefits it will have on your health, but for the even greater effects it will have on your brain.

Resources:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/stopping-smoking-mental-health-benefits/
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/06/smoking
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5403659/