Smoking in Linked to Increased Levels of Depression, Anxiety, and Other Mental Illnesses: New Studies

A new study conducted by Spanish researchers from the University of Navarra shows that smokers are significantly more likely to suffer from clinical depression than non-smokers. This finding has been confirmed and expanded by another, independent study carried out by an international team of scientists from King’s College (England), Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and University of Bergen. According to the latter study, smoking can trigger not only depression, but also anxiety disorder.

The Spanish researchers, who worked in collaboration with their colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health (USA) and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), examined and monitored mental health of almost 9,000 university graduates, both smokers and non-smokers. The obtained data have revealed than tobacco addicts are considerably more prone to developing depression and other mental diseases. In fact, smokers’ risk of getting a mental illness is more than 40 percent higher than that of non-smokers, the researchers concluded.

Their study, which was headed by Dr. Almudena Sanchez-Villegas, was carried out within a period of six years. The average starting age of participants was 42 years old. Over the research period, 190 previously mentally healthy smokers were diagnosed with clinical depression by their health care providers. Additional 65 smokers admitted they had been taking antidepressants to control their mental health, without receiving an official diagnosis of depression.

Dr. Sanchez-Villegas pointed out that smoking now had been identified as a factor that could increase a risk of developing mental illnesses, including depression. A relationship between smoking cigarettes, as well as consuming other nicotine-containing tobacco products, and suffering from mental instability has been clearly demonstrated by the results if the study.

Other researchers involved in the Spanish project also commented on possible links between genetic and environmental susceptibility to both smoking tobacco and suffering from depression. Previous studies showed that mentally unstable people often tend to seek relief from their condition in abusing substances, including alcohol, painkillers, tranquilizers, anti-depressants, illegal drugs and, above all, tobacco. A probability exists that depression-prone individuals would have developed the mental illness even if they were not smoking. However, further research is needed to clarify the issue.

An international group of scientists also conducted a large study that included over 92,000 subjects, to reveal possible links between smoking cigarettes and developing mental illnesses. They found that smoking young people, as well as smoking women, are more prone to suffering from both depression and anxiety than either smoking men or non-smokers. The study was based on the correlation between smoking habits of the participants and their test parameters in accordance with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.

Interestingly, the scientists also found that ex-smokers who had kicked the habit more than ten years ago ran a lower risk of contracting depression than people who had never smoked. Another finding was that people who had smoked progressively more over the study period had a tendency to exercise less and were less physically active than either non-smokers or light smokers.

Deanna Campbell