Helping psychiatric patients to stop smoking

Intensive treatment strategies are necessary, and relapses are common.

Nearly half of the cigarettes sold in the United States are bought by people with some type of mental illness, according to one of the few studies to look at a nationally representative sample of people with a range of psychiatric diagnoses. The same study found that 41% of the most severely mentally ill were smokers, compared with 35% of people who had ever had a psychiatric problem, and 23% of people in the general population.