Smoking and Suicide: A Brief Overview | Hacker News Reader

Smoking and Suicide: A Brief Overview

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

> Smoking has been associated with many psychological symptoms and psychiatric disorders (Hughes 1999; Kalman et al. 2005). One explanation of this association has been that those destined to become smokers have pre-existing or “latent” psychiatric or psychological problems and use nicotine to “self-medicate” to abate these (Markou & Kenny 2002). Several epidemiological and biological lines of evidence support this hypothesis (Markou & Kenny 2002).

Find that hard to believe. Thoughts?

> Find that hard to believe. Thoughts?

It's not a controversial point. We know that people with schizophrenia smoke; they smoke more cigarettes than other smokers; they smoke more of each cigarette than other smokers; they inhale deeper than other smokers; they start smoking at a younger age.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK179276/pdf/Bookshelf_N...

P123:

> Other disorders associated with cognitive and attentional impairment, such as schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), are characterized by a very high prevalence of smoking among those affected. It has been proposed that individuals with these disorders smoke in order to alleviate the symptoms of their disease, and a number of clinical trials using nicotine as a therapeutic agent have been conducted.

(I'm not cutting and pasting because PDF fucking sucks).

Thanks for quoting the backing research and it looks very sound. Now I am curious about how do they even begin. I know it's a naive question, but it's not like somebody is "prescribing" them to smoke or use nicotine. I can make sense (barely) of the behavior after smoking the first cigarette, but before that, a person, in general, should be unaware of its consequences. I am geniunely curious about what motivates such individuals to take the leap from 0 to 1.

Not really related, but this made me think of a funny episode I have witnessed.

After university, I had to have one year of civil service, and I ended up in a structure which patients were mentally retarded and/or light psychiatric disorders.

We would often work outside, tending the garden, planting flowers and whatnot, and some of the patients used to smoke.

Some big honcho saw this and decided that it was not a good sight, seeing them work with a cigarette in their mouth; on the other hand, they would want to have a smoke every once in a while, so it was decided that it would be more dignified to have officially sanctioned cigarette breaks.

The results? well, as it was (by definition) a "cigarette break", everybody wanted one, so all of them started smoking....

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