Low prevalence of smoking among patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Tobacco smoking is common among psychiatric patients, especially among those with schizophrenia, where the prevalence is extremely high, 74% to 88%, compared with 45% to 70% in patients with other psychiatric diagnoses. Patients with anxiety disorders are less well investigated in this respect, particularly obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients. Eighty-three psychiatric outpatients with OCD and 110 members of the Swedish OCD Association responded to questions concerning their smoking habits. Among OCD patients, 14% were current smokers (compared with 25% in the general population of Sweden), 72% had never smoked, and 11 previous smokers had stopped, mostly without any difficulties. Since a decreased smoking rate among OCD subjects was confirmed, the smoking prevalences in schizophrenia and OCD, respectively, seem to represent either end of a continuum, and OCD may also differ significantly from other anxiety disorders in this respect. Possible implications of this finding for the purported frontal lobe dysregulation in OCD are discussed.
Bejerot
S
S
Department of Neuroscience, University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden.
Humble
M
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002391:Catchment Area, Health; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000150:complications*; D015995:Prevalence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology*