Smoking and mental health - feeling glum and giving up

Giving up smoking could be as good for people's mental health as it is for their bodies despite the fact that people often say they smoke because it makes them feel less anxious or depressed. Researchers from Brown University in Rhode Island studied 236 men and women who were trying to give up. 99 of them never managed to give up at all, 33 managed to give up for the whole 28 weeks of the study and the rest gave up temporarily. Those who managed to quit temporarily had fewer depression symptoms when they weren't smoking but after they had relapsed their mood got worse, in some cases ending up worse than before they had stopped. The participants who never gave up were the unhappiest of all the groups whereas the ones who managed to abstain over the whole course of the study were the happiest to begin with and remained at the same level of happiness throughout.