Research shows high rates of smoking leads to addiction vulnerability

This is a common belief that the people with mental illness smoke at higher rates as compared to the population. This statement is challenged by the new research conducted at the Indiana University School of Medicine they found out those psychiatric diseases makes the brain more addicted to such practices. The lead researcher R. Andrew Chambers, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry at the IU School of Medicine explains, “This is really a devastating problem for people with mental illness because of the broad health consequences of nicotine addiction. These results strongly suggest that what has changed in mental illness to cause smoking at such high rates results in a co-morbid addiction to which the mentally ill are highly biologically vulnerable. The evidence suggests that the vulnerability is an involuntary biological result of the way the brain is designed and how it develops after birth, rather than it being about a rational choice to use nicotine as a medicine.”