Clinical and Research News  DOI: 10.1176/appi.pn.2013.9b27
Smoking and Mental Disorders: Which Comes First? Psychiatric
News Volume 48 Number 20 page 1-1   New evidence suggests that
educating the public about the dangers of smoking should include
warnings about an added risk for new-onset mood and anxiety
disorders.  Abstract Teaser  First lung cancer, then heart
disease. Now mental illness may prove to be another baleful
outcome of smoking cigarettes.  Two Johns Hopkins researchers
said their findings add a new statistical twist to prior
research and help “point to an increased smoking-attributable
burden of mental health morbidity and impairment in
functioning.”  The use of tobacco is usually seen as a form of
self-medication in people with mental illness, but perhaps the
flow of causation also runs in the opposite direction as well,
said Ramin Mojtabai, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of
mental health, and Rosa Crum, M.D., M.H.S., a professor of
epidemiology and of mental health, both at the Johns Hop