Smoking can be ignored by treating depression

A recent study proves that people with depression are more likely to smoke; compared to healthy people and that depressed people can harder give up with smoking, than healthy individuals. The study is published in The Cochrane Library and proves that patients can treat depression more efficiently after giving up with smoking. “Health professionals should encourage their smoking patients with depression to use a smoking cessation intervention that includes a psychosocial mood management component”, said the study’s lead author Regina van der Meer, MPH, a researcher at the Dutch Expert Centre on Tobacco Control. “In a standard smoking cessation program, people with depression are more likely to have negative mood changes from nicotine withdrawal, but the non-depressed group can experience mood states as well. But when depressed smokers quit, depression symptoms may actually improve. This makes it all the more critical to understand this high-risk group of smokers and what helps them quit tobacco”, she said.