Obsessive-compulsive symptoms and negative affect during tobacco withdrawal in a non-clinical sample of African American smokers

Abstract

The association between obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptomatology and smoking is poorly understood, particularly in African Americans—a group subject to smoking- and OC-related health disparities. In a non-clinical sample of 253 African American smokers, we tested the negative reinforcement model of OC-smoking comorbidity, purporting that smokers with higher OC symptoms experience greater negative affect (NA) and urge to smoke for NA suppression upon acute tobacco abstinence. Following a baseline visit involving OC assessment, participants completed two counterbalanced experimental visits (non-abstinent vs. 16-hr tobacco abstinence) involving affect, smoking urge, and nicotine withdrawal assessment. OC symptom severity predicted larger abstinence-provoked increases in overall NA, anger, anxiety, depression, fatigue, urge to smoke to suppress NA, and composite nicotine withdrawal symptom index. African American smokers with elevated OC symptoms appear to be vulnerable to negative reinforcement-mediated smoking motivation and may benefit from cessation treatments that diminish NA or the urge to quell NA via smoking.

Association of frequency of perceived exposure to discrimination with tobacco withdrawal symptoms and smoking lapse behavior in African Americans

“…After breath alcohol and CO assessments, participants then completed self-report measures of tobacco withdrawal at a single time-point followed by a smoking lapse analogue task to assess the motivational value of initiating smoking (described below). Detailed study procedures have been described in prior investigations [26,27].…”

“…This study analyzes data from the Southern California Tobacco Addiction Phenotype Project (2013-17), a laboratory study of individual differences in tobacco withdrawal phenotypes among African American smokers in Los Angeles, CA, metropolitan area [26,27]. Participants were 607 non-treatment seeking adult cigarette smokers [mean = aged 50.05 years, standard deviation (SD) = 10.6; see descriptive statistics in Table 1] who self-reported having non-Hispanic African American ancestry in both biological parents.…”

“…'I had little interest in my usual hobbies or activities') during the past 2 weeks on a five-point scale (1 = not at all to 5 = extremely) and yields a mean response per symptom composite score. Based on prior work [26,35,36], we dichotomized the following variables: educational attainment (never attended college versus some college attendance or higher education level), employment status (unemployed versus employed) and annual income (less than $15000 versus $15000 or greater) due to smaller cell sizes across response options and to characterize the sample of participants who were unemployed, had lower education and who were living in poverty.…”

More than the sum of its parts: A network perspective on tobacco withdrawal

“…This failure for symptoms to de-activate arises in strongly connected symptom networks that facilitate the reverberation of symptom activity through the network across time as activity in one symptom is transferred to another symptom via causal associations. Evidence for self-perpetuating symptom networks and their association with psychopathology comes from studies showing that individuals with densely connected symptom networks are more likely to experience greater symptoms of depression Lydon-Staley et al, 2019a;Pe et al, 2015;Bello et al, 2017). For example, individuals with networks of socioemotional states (e.g., anger, shame, and perceived control) structured such that they facilitate the persistent experience of sadness when perturbed show higher levels of depressive symptoms .…”

Self-affirmation and defensive processing of graphic cigarette warning labels by African American smokers: A community-based study

“…Other publications that include daily cigarette consumption among African Americans report means rather than intervals similar to ours, making comparison difficult. The average daily cigarette consumption reported in such studies ranges from 12.5 (SD = 5.7; Nollen et al, 2016) to 15.13 (SD = 7.32; Bello et al, 2017) to 19.8 (SD = 10.3; Nollen et al, 2005).…”