Study Finds That Smoking Is Linked With Risk Of Suicide

Main Category: Depression
Also Included In: Smoking / Quit Smoking;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 10 Jan 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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After an in-depth study among young people in Bavaria, German researchers found a clear and alarming link between smoking and the desire to kill oneself.

The investigation, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, is based on data from a detailed psychology study launched in 1995 among 3,021 people aged 14-24 who lived in Munich.

They were interviewed again four years later, when 2,548 of the volunteers responded.

A quarter of these individuals never smoked, 40 per cent were defined as occasional smokers, 17 per cent as "non-dependent" regular smokers and 19 per cent as addicted smokers.

Among non smokers, nearly 15 per cent reported having had suicidal thoughts, defined as making plans to kill himself or herself or spending two weeks or longer with the wish to die.

The rate was around 20 per cent among occasional and non-dependent smokers, but among dependent smokers, suicidal ideation was 30 per cent.

An even more pronounced pattern was found among the 69 individuals who had actually tried to commit suicide.

Only 0.6 percent of the non-smokers said they had sought to end their life; among non-dependent smokers, the rate was 1.6 percent; but among addicted smokers, it was 6.4 per cent.

To ensure that the results were not being skewed by other factors, the researchers stripped out alcohol use, illicit drug use and a history of depression among the volunteers.

They found the result was the same: the more a person smoked, the likelier he or she would have suicidal ideation.

The authors, led by Thomas Bronisch of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich said, "Campaigns for reducing smoking should also point to the elevated risk of suicidality for occasional and regular smokers."

They acknowledge that there were limitations to their study.

One was that in the four-year follow-up, no suicides actually occurred, so that the conclusions of the study are based on suicidal ideas and attempts rather than the completion of the act.

Previous investigations have likewise seen an association between suicide and smoking but also left unsettled the big question as to whether smoking causes the malaise or is just a symptom of it.

Some research suggests that nicotine depletes a vital pleasure giving brain chemical called serotonin, and the risk could be higher among individuals with a genetic susceptibility to this effect.

Meanwhile, other research has suggested that tobacco smoke may contain antidepressant compounds that may encourage depressed individuals to smoke.

http://www.ash.org.uk