The article, “Leveraging National Data and Regional Innovations to Right-Size Tobacco Treatment Policy for Behavioral Health in a Midwestern State,” has been published in SAj.
In this commentary, the authors state that people with mental health (MH) and substance use disorders (SUD) have high rates of tobacco use and tobacco-related mortality. They want to stop smoking and studies have shown they can quit, but few behavioral health facilities provide tobacco treatment.
In the AUTHORS’ OWN WORDS, they relate the importance of their work:
“Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death worldwide, estimated to cause more than 7 million deaths per year. People with mental health or substance use disorders (MH/SUD) are disproportionately affected by high smoking prevalence, being 2 to 4 times more likely to smoke cigarettes than the general population. They also die 5 or more years earlier from smoking-related diseases compared to people with MH/SUD who do not smoke.”
“The purpose of our study was to summarize data on tobacco services in MH/SUD facilities in states similar to our own, identify policies these states that were associated with high rates of tobacco treatment, and present these data to state leaders to encourage them to adopt similar policies to potentially increase support for tobacco recovery in behavioral health facilities. This descriptive ecologic study may serve as a model for how other states can leverage readily available data to help their states identify locally feasible policies to reduce tobacco-related illnesses and deaths among people with MH/SUD.”