Mental ills impede smoking cessation in pregnancy
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Depression and other psychiatric problems may make it tougher for women to quit smoking during pregnancy, according to a new study.
About one in four women stop smoking on their own when they find they’re pregnant. For the rest, some respond to help with quitting, but most do not, Dr. Louise H. Flick of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and colleagues note in the American Journal of Public Health.
People with mental health problems are known to be more likely to smoke, they add, and recent research suggests that cigarette smoking may be a form of self-medication.
To investigate whether women who don’t kick the habit while pregnant may be more likely to have psychiatric problems, the researchers looked at a group of 744 low-income pregnant women.
The team found that those who smoked and kept doing so after learning they were pregnant were 2.5 times more likely than those who had never smoked to suffer from a psychiatric disorder. Women who had used tobacco in the past 12 months, but quit when they got pregnant, were 2 times as likely to have a psychiatric disorder.
Among the persistent smokers, 25% had a psychiatric diagnosis, including anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, oppositional disorder (characterized by negative, hostile and defiant behavior), drug abuse or dependence, or attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder.
Also, among the women who smoked during pregnancy, those with a psychiatric disorder smoked 9.2 cigarettes daily compared to 6.5 for those who had not been diagnosed with mental illness.
“Although typically women are highly motivated to discontinue tobacco use during their pregnancy, pregnancy smoking cessation programs are unlikely to be fully successful without attention to psychiatric disorders,” the researchers conclude.
SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, October 2006.
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