Smoking and mental illness

There has long been known to be a link between smoking and mental illness and a study of 280 service users in Melbourne, Australia has found that they were more than four times as likely to smoke as the rest of the population. 62% of the sample smoked and they consumed an average of 22 cigarettes a day, 50% more than in the general population with the heaviest smokers in the group smoking up to 80 a day. 59% of the smokers said that they wanted to give up and 74% wanted to cut down. The biggest cause of death among people with mental illness is cardiovascular disease and some service users can spend more than 20% of their income on cigarettes.

You can find out more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/10/09/smoking-accompanies-mental-illness/3099.html