ABSTRACT
As recently as 30 years ago, when smoking was socially acceptable for men and in many circles for women as well, it would have been difficult to demonstrate a relationship between the regular use of tobacco and a psychiatric condition. However, in the past 10 years, as many smokers quit smoking or attempted to do so in response to the negative information about the health consequences of smoking, considerable scientific evidence emerged pointing to dramatic differences in the rates of smoking according to the presence of a psychiatric history. The earliest report linking psychiatric diagnoses and smoking appeared in 1986, when a group of psychiatric researchers in Minnesota observed a higher prevalence of smoking among patients in a mental health clinic who suffered from major depression, anxiety, or schizophrenia, when compared with representative individuals drawn from the community (Hughes, Hatsukami, Mitchell, & Dahlgren, 1986). Numerous studies since then have pointed to a greater propensity of persons with those disorders as well as those with alcoholism to become cigarette smokers, to smoke more heavily, and to have greater difficulties when stopping when compared with nonaffected individuals.
