Does Smoking Increase or Decrease Anxiety and Depression

Many think that smoking calms the nerves, and relieves one from anxiety and depression. But researchers found that it is not so, and in fact the opposite is the reality.

A team from the Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute found that smoking increases the risk of some anxiety disorders in teens and young adults.

In the research they found that the risk of developing agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, is high in teenagers who smoke at least a pack of cigarettes a day. Also, smoking is found to cause panic disorder in young adulthood.

Adolescents who smoke 20 cigarettes or more in a day are nearly 7 times more at the risk of developing agoraphobia during early adulthood. They were also 5.5 times more at the risk of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 16 times to suffer from panic disorder.

In fact, many smokers spend most of their day suffering from the misery of temporary withdrawal from nicotine when they wait for their next cigarette. When smoking exerts such profound influences on human brain, I think there is no surprise if smoking has serious long term and negative consequences.

2 Responses to “Does Smoking Increase or Decrease Anxiety and Depression”

  1. donna Says:
    April 17th, 2009 at 5:46 am

    i have been a smoke since 14, and am 21 now, i joined the army at 17 and have been having worse and worse anxiety attacks, i think it’s agorphobia because i hate being around a bunch of people, i never thought that smoking could contribute to these horrible attacks, i am glad i read this article.

  2. ryan Says:
    September 22nd, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    I have mild social anxiety, and it all started when i started smoking. couincidence or not? (i was OVERLY confident before i started smoking). i dont know.. but when i dont smoke for a while i tend to feel more relaxed and have a stable heartrate… very strange indeed.

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