Smoking and Mental Health - Helping smokers to quit
In the North East around 21% of adults smoke. But that is double for people with mental health problems.
Smokers with a mental health problem tend to smoke more heavily and be more dependent than other smokers. For instance, half of individuals with a schizophrenia diagnosis or a bipolar affective disorder smoke over 20 cigarettes a day.
Fresh has been working with partners to increase access to effective stop smoking support and reduce smoking rates amongst mental health service users.
This includes:
• Stop smoking support, mental health awareness and tobacco education training packages for service users, volunteers and staff in mental health services. This is aimed at allowing a greater understanding of the health effects of tobacco use, enabling research into motivation to quit, up-skilling providers to develop core competencies in the tobacco control field with the aim of securing attitudinal change amongst those supporting the needs of those with mental health difficulties
• Smokefree policies and project work to support mental health sites in the North East to comply with the smokefree legislation through visits to hospital buildings within Trusts
The Government recently carried out a major national consultation on the future of NHS mental health services under the title "New Horizons: towards a shared vision for mental health"
Click here to read the Fresh response
Click here to see the ASH fact sheet on smoking and mental health