APA Joins With CDC to Open ‘Quit Smoking’ Campaign
Abstract
A disproportionate number of people with mental illness smoke cigarettes, and APA is working to provide psychiatrists with smoking cessation information.
APA is teaming up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a campaign to persuade members of the public to stop smoking while encouraging psychiatrists to redouble their efforts to help their patients quit.
Between 40 percent and 60 percent of people with mental illness smoke. Of the 480,000 premature deaths attributable to tobacco in the United States, 200,000 occur among people with mental illness.
APA’s primary role in the campaign is dedicated to communicating to its members the necessity for smoking cessation efforts directed at patients and developing ways to help them do it.
In 2014, APA’s Council on Addiction Psychiatry set up the Work Group on Tobacco Use Disorders, which submitted a strategic plan in July 2015 as an informational item to the Board of Trustees.
Douglas Ziedonis, M.D., M.P.H., chair of APA’s Tobacco Use Disorder Work Group, led the effort to devise a plan to improve education of psychiatrists in tobacco cessation practices and enhance APA’s leadership in this cause.
“Tobacco use is a serious public health problem that disproportionately affects individuals with psychiatric illness,” noted work group chair Douglas Ziedonis, M.D., M.P.H., a professor and chair of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.
The work group’s strategic plan—titled “Psychiatrists Undertaking Freedom From Smoking (PUFFS)”—calls for better education and training in tobacco cessation for psychiatrists, improved clinical practices in treating tobacco use disorders, and stronger APA’s leadership in these efforts.
People with mental illnesses often say they are ready to quit smoking, and research shows they can do that with help, noted the work group. “[B]ut to achieve this goal, clinicians need to be armed with the proper knowledge, low-burden assessment tools, and evidence-based interventions.”
The work group has marked out a detailed plan for achieving that goal over the next year, with the involvement of the Education, Research, and Communications divisions of APA, as well as the Council on Addiction Psychiatry. The work group received support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Smoking Cessation Leadership Center.
For its part, the CDC will roll out a public campaign in two waves. The first is a series of television and online ads that bluntly depict the ills caused by smoking tobacco.
One depicts a woman who smoked three packs a day. She recalls how she suffered a collapsed lung at age 35 and was in the early stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Another presents an Air Force veteran who had a heart attack at age 35 and was diagnosed with COPD, depression, and anxiety. Eventually he needs a heart transplant and tells viewers: “If you feel attached to your cigarettes, just wait until you have an oxygen tank.”
Ads like these are running in national and local media through June 12. There are also special ethnic versions, and TV ads will run in selected doctors’ offices in Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, and Vietnamese. A week after the campaign ends, a follow-up series of radio spots will ask listeners to call a national quit-smoking telephone number. Nicotine replacement therapy will be offered free for a short time as well.
“Mental health care providers not only need to be aware of the high smoking rates among people with serious mental illness, they also should address cessation with every patient at every encounter,” said Shelley S. Hammond, M.M.C., a health communications specialist with the Office on Smoking and Health at the CDC, in a webinar announcing the ad campaign. ■
