Smoking, Mental Health and Protecting Your Lungs
People living with mental health conditions are more likely to smoke, often more heavily, increasing lung health risks. We can help.
Why lung health matters when it comes to mental health
Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and can also increase your risk of conditions like COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which can make everyday activities such as walking upstairs or sleeping comfortably much harder.
If you live with anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or another mental health condition, it can be easy to put physical symptoms down to stress or something else, but persistent symptoms should always be checked.
Look out for:
- A cough that doesn’t go away
- Feeling more breathless than usual
- Chest pain
- Repeated chest infections
- Coughing up blood
- Feeling unusually tired or losing weight without trying
If something doesn’t feel right, speak to your GP and get help to quit.
Why is smoking used as a coping mechanism?
Because nicotine stimulates the release of dopamine in the brain, an important driver of the brain’s reward system, it might feel like smoking a cigarette helps to relieve the symptoms of anxiety, stress or depression. But smoking only provides a temporary feeling of calm – for around 20 minutes – before withdrawal symptoms and cravings set in and you want to reach for another cigarette.
This negative cycle of dependency can be very hard for smokers to break. On top of this, worries about the impact of smoking on your physical health or the financial cost of smoking could negatively affect your mental health.
The best way to move forward is to quit smoking and develop some healthier strategies for managing your health and wellbeing.
What are the psychological benefits of quitting smoking?
When you stop smoking, you experience many positive effects on your mental health, including:
- Reduced anxiety, stress and depression levels
- Improved mood, self-esteem and quality of life
- If you are taking medication for a mental health condition, such as antidepressants, you might find that you can reduce the dosage when you quit smoking.
Changes to your medication should only be done in consultation with your doctor.
Stopping smoking is a journey, however, and you might find that you experience mood swings and that your mental health gets worse rather than better in the short term. Nicotine withdrawal symptoms, such as irritability, anxiety and restlessness, might last 2-4 weeks.
It’s important that you get support from a stop smoking service to help you cope with this.
How to quit
When you quit smoking, it’s normal to experience withdrawal symptoms due to reduced levels of nicotine within the body. If you smoke and have a mental health condition, you might believe that it will be harder for you to quit smoking. However, with the right support, it’s possible.
Stop Smoking London understands that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to quitting. You might need help from your local stop smoking service or benefit from the Smokefree app for London for 24h support alongside nicotine replacement therapy, for example.
We provide a range of options to help Londoners give up smoking:
How does smoking affect mental health?
Smoking has various psychological effects, including increasing anxiety and stress and putting you at higher risk of depression. If you’re experiencing any kind of mental health problem, smoking is not an effective way to manage your condition.
Anxiety can happen in many situations, such as meeting new people or when you’ve got an important event coming up.
When you feel anxious, you look for ways to relieve this feeling and this might include smoking a cigarette. But does smoking help with anxiety or does it cause anxiety?
Although you get an initial sense of relief from the nicotine, this soon fades away. You might then find yourself in a cycle of craving and withdrawal and start to feel even more anxious. If you stop smoking, you can lower your anxiety.
Learn more about smoking and anxiety and how to quit.
When you’re stressed about something, such as money, work or a relationship, you might think that smoking will help you to feel calmer.
It can actually make you feel worse as the dopamine released in the brain by the nicotine quickly falls.
Soon you’ll be craving another cigarette and you might even start feeling stressed about how smoking damages your health and how much it is costing you.
Quitting smoking can actually help to reduce stress.
Find out more about smoking and stress and how to quit.
Many Londoners experience low mood or depression – for example, when recovering from a difficult life event or going through hormonal changes.
Smoking might make you feel better temporarily but it won’t get to the root cause of why you’re feeling low and it might make you feel worse.
There is also evidence that smoking can cause disruption to the effectiveness of certain medication and antidepressants meaning you may need an increased dose.
When you stop smoking, you’ll soon see the positive impact it has on your mood.
If you take antidepressants or other medication for your mental health, talk to your GP or psychiatrist before you give up smoking.
Get advice and support on how to quit.
Other ways to manage your mental health
There is lots of support available to help you lower anxiety, reduce stress, boost mood and manage other mental health conditions:
