You are more likely to be depressed if you smoke – study shows

We have been warned about the dangers of smoking since childhood. But how many of us take it seriously? Despite knowing all the dangers associated with smoking tobacco, some people still go on and smoke.

Apart from the dangers we have always known such as damage to the internal organs such as the liver, heart and lungs, it turns out that tobacco smoking could also be a predisposing factor to depression. Previous studies have also found that depression is a strong contributing factor to smoking and substance abuse.

However, in this particular study published in the journal Of Plos One, “Depression is suggested to occur two times more frequently among current moderate smokers compared to non-smokers”.

The study that involved 2,138 students in two different universities in Serbia found that in both populations, students who smoked showed more depression signs than those who never smoked in their lifetime.

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In both populations, smoking was associated with poor quality of both mental and physical health. In one population (Belgrade University), the physical composite score (PCS) of students who never smoked was 2.3 points higher than that of the students who ever smoked in their lifetime. On the other hand, the mental composite score (MCS) of the students who never smoked was 5.0 points higher than that of those who ever smoked.

The second population (Kosovska Mitrovica) showed an even higher disparity in terms of both mental and physical composite scores between smokers and non-smokers, clearly indicating that indeed, smoking had an impact in someone’s mental health.