Abstract
To analyze the association between mental health problems and smoking in adolescents.A total of 4,325 adolescents aged 15 from the 1993 birth cohort of the city of Pelotas, Southern Brazil, was studied. Smoking was defined as having smoked one or more cigarettes in the previous 30 days. Mental health was assessed according to the total score of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Score > 20 points was considered positive. Data were analyzed using Poisson regression with adjustment for robust variance.Smoking prevalence was 6.0% and about 30% of the adolescents presented some mental health problem. In the crude analysis, the prevalence ratio for smoking was 3.3 (95%CI 2.5; 4.2). After the adjusted analysis (for sex, age, skin color, family income, mother's level of schooling, group of friends who smoke, employment in the previous year, school failure, physical activity during leisure time and experimental use of alcohol), it decreased to 1.7 (95%CI 1.2; 2.3) among those with mental health problem.Mental health problems in adolescence may be related to tobacco consumption.
Highlights
Smoking is considered a public health problem and is related to 50 different incapacitating diseases
Failure at school was informed by 62% of the subjects and 78% answered they had not worked in the previous year (Table 1)
An association was found between mental health problems and smoking, and the individuals classified as having abnormal behavior by the SDQ presented higher smoking prevalence when compared to the individuals classified as normal
Summary
Smoking is considered a public health problem and is related to 50 different incapacitating diseases. It is responsible for an average of 200 thousand deaths per year in Brazil and surpasses the sum of deaths caused by alcoholism, aids, traffic accidents, homicides and suicides.a. Smoking onset occurs, on average, when the person is between 12 and 13 years of age, at the beginning of adolescence, a period of numerous physiological, behavioral and psychosocial transformations.a These transformations can make adolescents become more susceptible to the adoption of behaviors which weaken their health, such as sedentariness, smoking, and alcohol and drugs consumption.
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