International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Review Article

Nicotine Addiction in Schizophrenia, Availability of Better Treatment Options as are in General Population

¹Department of Psychiatry, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia

²People’s Medical College, Nawabshah

³Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi

⁴Liaquat College of Medicine and Dentistry, Karachi

⁵Jinnah Sindh Medical University, Karachi

⁶NYU Langone Medical Center

⁷Psych Care Consultants Research, St Louis

*Corresponding Author:

Saeed Ahmed MD
Department of Psychiatry
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia
E-mail: ahmedsaeedmd@gmail.com

This article reviews literature regarding smoking cessation in Schizophrenia population, its harmful effects on health, finances, role of mental health care providers and better available options for treatment as are in general population. This population not only smokes at higher rates, but also has higher nicotine dependence with lower cessation rates than general population, people of schizophrenia have truncated life span due to smoking related diseases and premature mortality compared with the general population. Contrary to traditional reasoning that this population is not motivated or able to tolerate smoking cessation, but there is extensive literature that negates such rationale, even provides better treatment options to address this huge public health burden. Our review will mainly focusing treatment options particularly drug Varenicline, that shows most effective and promising results in patients of schizophrenia for smoking cessation as in general population, moreover different combination therapies, few new interventions, as well as some clinical areas will be discussed those need to be studied further in future.

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