- Title
- Smoking in people with co-morbid depression and drug and alcohol use
- Creator
- Edwards, Sarah
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- Professional Doctorate - Doctorate of Clinical and Health Psychology
- Description
- Smoking remains a major public health concern, with consequences not limited to individual health, but extended to communities and across nations. The largest single cause of mortality and disease in Australia that is preventable is tobacco smoking. Smoking has also been shown to be associated with a number of mental illnesses as well as increased drug and alcohol use. Treatment for individuals experiencing such comorbidities is limited, with people suffering from mental illness, and drug and/or alcohol addiction who smoke often being ineligible for treatment programs. The current study aimed to address this gap by exploring the relationship between smoking, depression and anxiety, as well as drug and alcohol use in more detail. Specifically, it was hypothesised that individuals with increased use of tobacco would evidence higher rates of depression and alcohol use. Furthermore, it was expected that those who are heavy smokers will have poorer outcomes on measures of depression and alcohol use than non-smokers. Lastly, it is expected that reductions in tobacco smoking will be observed from pre to post treatment and that these reductions will be moderated by treatment condition. Methods: Participants were those enrolled in the Depression and Alcohol Integrated and Single-focused Interventions project (DAISI, 1), and the Self Help for Alcohol/other drugs and DEpression project (SHADE, 2), with the student having worked on both of the projects from baseline through to follow up. The total number of participants involved in the two studies was 447. They received one of a number of treatments including a brief intervention targeting depression; 10 sessions of CBT/MI targeting depression; 10sessions of CBT/MI targeting alcohol use; 10 sessions of CBT/MI targeting both depression and alcohol use concurrently; 10 sessions of person centred therapy or 10 sessions of CBT/MI delivered via computer program. Results: The results suggest that tobacco use is associated with factors including anxiety, cannabis use, and lower functioning and quality of life, as well as gender. Heavy smokers did not report significantly higher levels of depression or alcohol use when compared to non-smokers. Smoking was not found to moderate treatment outcome. There was also no evidence to suggest that skills learned in therapy were generalised to smoking, with no changes in smoking behaviours being associated with time or treatment allocation. Conclusions: While the current study lends some support to previous research by affirming the relationship between tobacco smoking and mental illness as well as drug and alcohol use, it also suggests that tobacco use does not interfere with treatment for depression and alcohol use. Further research is required into this area with specific areas including gender differences as well as the generalisability of skills learned in therapy being important areas of future consideration. Future Direction: Future research should focus on exploring further the relationship between tobacco use and mental illness and drug and alcohol use. Specifically, the idea of the generalisability of skills learned in therapy being used for a secondary condition is extremely interesting and worthy of future research. Gender differences in regards to tobacco use is also appealing to explore further with implications relating to the future development of interventions for smokers suffering comorbid mental health and drug and alcohol disorders.
- Subject
- smoking; depression; alcohol; comorbidity
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/935854
- Identifier
- uon:12150
- Language
- eng
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