No butts

Our Public Mental Health Implementation Centre (PMHIC) is preparing a briefing with Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) which will contain the actions needed to improve access to smoking cessation interventions for people with mental disorder.

To mark World No Tobacco Day, which was on 31 May, Dr Jonathan Campion, Clinical and Strategic Co-Director of PMHIC would like to remind members that:

• smoking is the single largest cause of preventable death in the UK
• because people with mental disorders smoke significantly more that those without mental disorders, smoking is an even greater cause of their health inequalities and accounts for a significant proportion of their 7-25 years reduced life expectancy
• smokers with mental disorders want to stop
• despite the existence of effective stop smoking interventions, only a minority of people with mental disorders receive such interventions. Furthermore, access to such interventions has been reducing over the last few years 
• psychiatrists have a key role to support provision of effective smoking cessation interventions for people with mental disorders.

Back to 9 June 2022 Members' update.