Australia: Concern Over Mentally Ill Smokers

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 14 Dec 2007 - 4:00 PDT

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Experts say that people with mental illness are three times more likely to smoke and not enough is being done to help them quit.

A new Access Economics report shows almost 1.3 million Australians with a mental illness are smokers with an annual cost of 33 billion Australian dollars.

SANE Australia, which commissioned the report, is calling for urgent action to introduce quit smoking programmes and support for people with a mental illness.

Executive director Barbara Hocking said smokers with a mental illness paid 2.8 billion dollars every year in tobacco taxes, but there was little evidence of equitable funding and few programmes to help the large numbers who wanted to quit.

She added, "Smoking is a huge physical and financial burden for people with a mental illness and our research shows how much it's costing us. Quit programmes have successfully reduced smoking rates generally but people with a mental illness have been largely ignored despite evidence which shows they respone well to targeted campaigns."

The report shows that people with mental illness make up 38 per cent of all smokers. People with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are three times more likely to smoke than other Australians.

This group also tends to smoke more heavily than others, buying 42 per cent of the cigarettes sold in Australia each year.

Ms Hocking said while people living with a mental illness were acknowledged in some policy documents, no state governments have developed co-ordinated cessation services to support them. "We welcome the governments commitment to the National Tobacco Strategy and call on all Australian governments, quit organisations, mental health services and relevant health agencies to implement SANE's recommendations."

http://www.ash.org.uk