Schizophrenia looking at the relationship of smoking prevalence with clinical symptoms and medication induced symptoms

• Main Author: Neo, Shee Ling
• Other Authors: Douglas B. Matthews
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52507
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the impact of schizophrenia has been found to be the highest among Southeast Asian countries with Singapore ranking seven globally in terms of disability-adjusted life year (DALY) scores (a measure of overall disease burden). More worryingly, schizophrenia is one of the mental illnesses with the highest prevalence rate of smoking. It was reported that the rate of smoking in the schizophrenic population is two to four times that of the general population. This puts forth the possibility that smoking and schizophrenia may share a common underlying physiology. It has also been suggested in multiple literature that smoking behaviors among schizophrenics may be an attempt to treat an underlying biological pathology by self-administration of nicotine. This paper aims to further current understanding of schizophrenia by examining the potential implications of the radical prevalence of smoking in schizophrenic patients. In this paper, an overview of the explanations for high rate of smoking in schizophrenia in terms of clinical reports of sensory, sensori-motor and cognitive deficits of schizophrenia, the undesirable side effects of the use of antipsychotics and the role of nicotine in modulating these symptoms and deficits is presented as major support for the self-medication hypothesis.