Smoking in psychiatric settings: Prevalence and treatment.
| Author(s)
Karolina Magda Bogdanowicz, Professor Ann McNeill and Professor John Strang
| | Presenter(s) |
Karolina Magda Bogdanowicz Research Associate, King's College London, National Addiction Centre, Institute of Psychiatry | Abstract Just over a quarter of smokers in England have a mental health diagnosis or are in receipt of a psychotropic medication. An NHS imperative is that all patients who smoke and who enter the NHS for substance abuse or mental health problems are given nicotine dependence treatment. We assessed this across the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) Trust in England.
The Clinical Records Interactive Search (CRIS) in SLaM enables researchers to search and retrieve electronic health records anonymously. We analyzed data relating to smoking and its treatment across five diagnostic populations: (i) serious mental illness (SMI), (ii) depression, (iii) personality disorders (PD), (iv) opiate dependence (OD) and (v) alcohol dependence (AD). Of approximately 16,000 SMI cases, 33% were assessed for smoking; of 54% were identified as smokers, 83% were advised to quit. In 11,158 cases of AD, 15% were assessed for smoking, 77% were smokers, and 67% advised to quit. Results for other diagnostic categories and smoking interventions will be given.
Smoking assessment amongst the five patient groups was poor, but where smoking was recorded, prevalence was high. Identifying smokers appeared to trigger advice to quit. Improving compliance with smoking assessment across mental healthcare is therefore critically important.
| Presenter biography Karolina Bogdanowicz is a research associate at the National Addiction Centre and works closely with Prof Strang, Prof McNeill and the Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health.
Ann McNeill is a Professor of Addictions in the National Addiction Centre with a focus on tobacco. She has published more than 250 academic papers book chapters, reports and opinion pieces on tobacco.
Professor John Strang is Head of the Addictions Department at Kings College London and is also Leader of the Addictions Clinical Academic Group of the Kings Health Partners AHSC.
| Source of funding: Funding for the project was provided by the BRC (Biomedical Research Centre) Disorders of Affect and their Addiction with Medicine (DAAIM).
| Declaration of interest: None
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