A new study reveals that people who experience their first bout of psychosis are much more likely (up to three times) to smoke tobacco than people who are otherwise mentally stable.
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Kings College, London researchers conducted a deep analysis of at least sixty one studies with a comprising information of 2,73,000 non smokers and 15,000 smokers. They also found that people who smoked cigarettes every day developed disorders roughly a year earlier than those who don’t smoke.
While there does seem to be a link between cigarette smoking at a young age leading to schizophrenia later in life, the authors of the study caution that longer-term studies clearly establishing this link need to be done.
It has long been recognised that people suffering from psychosis tend to smoke more than most of the population, but it has generally been assumed they are self-medicating.
Funding for this research was provided by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) and King’s College London. But if this had to be true, researchers expect that the smoking rate should increase only after the onset of psychosis symptoms.
Researchers said the findings suggest that smoking may have a causal role in psychosis, alongside other genetic and environmental factors.
The researchers believe that if the smoking rate is higher before the patients are diagnosed with schizophrenia, it means that the patients are not smoking just to ease the symptoms.
According to Dr James MacCabe, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s, it is hoped that the study “open our eyes to the possibility that tobacco could be a causative agent in psychosis”.
Smoking tobacco may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses, scientists have suggested.
While the scientists were unable to prove causation, they stated that some of the studies they analyzed failed to consider potential confounding factors such as whether or not the smoking subjects were also regular marijuana users because cannabis consumption has been linked to psychotic illness.
Dopamine is a chemical messenger that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centres.
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While the incidence of schizophrenia is 1 in 100, smoking may double the incidence to two in one hundred. “We should aim to find ways of separating any beneficial components of both cannabis and tobacco which alleviate mental pain, while eliminating those that can damage physical health as well as potentially contribute to psychotic illness”.
