Smoking and Mental Illness Among Adults in the United States

Tobacco use continues to be the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Some subgroups, such as people with mental illness, have different patterns of cigarette use and successful smoking cessation.  This report uses data from the 2012 to 2014 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (NSDUHs) to provide up-to-date information on the relationship between smoking and mental illness. This report compares past month cigarette use among adults with past year any mental illness (AMI) to cigarette use among those without AMI. The report also includes a comparison of smoking cessation among adults with past year AMI with those without past year AMI.  Findings in this report indicate that past month cigarette use was more likely among adults with mental illness than among those without AMI (33.3 vs. 20.7 percent). Among adults with mental illness who had ever smoked daily in their lifetime, two-thirds (61.6 percent) smoked in the past 30 days compared with less than half (47.2 percent) of adults without AMI who had ever smoked daily in their lifetime. The average number of cigarettes smoked in the past month was higher among adult smokers with AMI than among smokers without AMI (326 vs. 284 cigarettes).  The associations between mental illness and both past month cigarette use and smoking cessation were found across age groups and across genders. Policymakers, mental health practitioners, and public health service providers can use this information to better understand and address the needs of people with mental illness to make progress in lowering the rates of smoking among them.