Smoking and mental health – an effective model
Ian Saberton, Mental Health Training and Development Stop Smoking Coordinator, Ashton, Leigh and Wigan PCT, UK

Abstract
Mental Health service users are on average twice as likely to smoke as the general population (Meltzer, 1995). Furthermore this group are more heavily addicted and, on average, smoke more cigarettes per day than the general population (El-Guebaly and Hodgins, 1992).

This group has higher rates of physical illness and decreased life expectancy (even after factoring out increased suicide rate).

This represents a huge health inequality. However, evidence exists that a large proportion of mental health service users want to (Meltzer, 2001) and can stop smoking.

Mental Health intervention is not a linear model, therefore a ‘network’ of trained advisers is the key to success. Wherever a service users mentions stopping smoking a trained adviser can support and facilitate a quit attempt.

The Stop Smoking Service has focused on training and development of a ‘network’ of mental health staff to provide stop smoking interventions to their service users. This has included different levels of training in different clinical areas as well as mentorship and support for trained staff. It has encompassed Primary and Secondary Care and includes statutory and voluntary services.

The poster will explain the background, describe the model and discuss initial results.