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Pattern of Tobacco Use among Children and Adolescents with comorbid Psychiatric Illnesses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

I. Afridi*
Affiliation:
CPSP (College of Physicians & Surgeons, Pakistan), Faculty Of Psychiatry, Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

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Introduction

Tobacco use is clearly harmful for mental as well as physical health especially among persons <18 yeards age. It is used in multiple forms in many countries such as, somoling chewing etc. It is impotant to know the pattern of tobacco use and the comorbid psychiatric illnesses inthis age group.

Objectives

To identify the pattern of tobacco use among cases <18 years age with various psychiatric disorders.

Methods

It was a cross-sectional study conducted at a psychiatric clinic at Karachi, on all consecutive cases <18 years. Diagnostic criteria of ICD-10 were used.

Results

A total number of 700 consecutive cases below the age of 18 years reporting to psychiatric clinic were inducted in this study. Out of them 107 (15%) patients reported use of tobacco. Among them 83 (77% ) used pan with tobacco. The psychiatric illnesses identified were depressive disorder (39%) & conversion disorder (15%).

Conclusions

Tobacco use (predominantly in the form of chewing), is common amongst children and adolescents reporting for psychiatric consultation. It is important to develop strategies at a community level with legal restriction/implementation selling tobacco to children. Moreover, psychiatric evaluation should be done in all children and adolescents identified as using tobacco, and the term “smoking cessation clinic” should be replaced with “tobacco cessation clinic/ services”.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Type
Abstract
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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