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WARD 7

Danger Warning!    This is a smoking section of the sanitarium, if you do not smoke please do not enter.

Over the past 40 years, there has been a decline in smoking throughout the general population. Sadly there has been little change in certain subgroups, among them people with mental illness. Smokers who have mental illness require higher levels of antipsychotic medication, report more fatigue and are more likely to have a history of stained teeth and bad breath . Effects of smoking and withdrawal can complicate assessment and treatment of mental illness and make diagnosis more difficult.

We became increasingly aware of heavy smoking in psychiatric units, representing a public health problem and a worry about the future care of tobacco-addicted psychiatric inpatients – as hospitals, including Happy Dale become increasingly intolerant of smoking. We set out to determine whether, as we suspected, psychiatric inpatients smoke more after admission than immediately beforehand and, if so, to explore their reasons.  Actually any one who smokes is nuts to some extent, considering the known health risks.

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