The Association between Secondhand Smoke and Stress, Depression, and Suicidal Ideation in Adolescents

Abstract

Background: Secondhand smoke (SHS) is an important risk factor for adolescents’ health. Several studies have reported that SHS is as dangerous as active smoking. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between exposure to SHS and mental health, including stress, depression, and suicidal ideation, in adolescents. Methods: Using raw data from the 2018 14th Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey, we analyzed the effects of sociodemographic characteristics on stress, depression, suicidal ideation in 51,500 students, including 85.8% of all sampled students (n = 60,040), after excluding students with a history of smoking, and then we performed logistic regression analysis to determine the level of exposure to SHS and its impact on stress, depression, and suicidal ideation. Results: The increased level of exposure to SHS was positively associated with stress, depression, and suicidal ideation. Furthermore, stress, depression, and suicidal ideation increased as the level of SHS increased, after adjusting for variables such as age, gender, education level of the father and mother, school achievement, economic status, inhabitation, and drinking. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that SHS is positively associated with risk of mental health problems, including stress, depression, and suicidal ideation, in adolescents. Further research and policy strategies and systems to prevent and manage exposure to SHS in adolescents are required.

WITHDRAWN: Assessing the Causal Effects of Environmental Tobacco Smoke Exposure: A meta-analytic Mendelian randomisation study

“…It is possible that the absence of an association with CVD observed in the present study reflects a greater robustness to residual confounding, selection bias, and reverse causation. To this extent, our findings may support claims that previous observational estimates of ETS exposure and its attributable risk are overestimated (63,64), However, none of these studies are policy evaluations, and direct comparisons with these previous estimates of the effect of ETS are difficult due to the common practice of treating ETS exposure as a dichotomous variable (9,75–77). Moreover, given the difficulty in performing reliable power calculations for multivariable-MR studies, we cannot exclude the possibility of an effect of environmental tobacco smoking on stroke, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and depression, albeit of a magnitude much smaller than that of first-hand smoking.…”

“…It is possible that the absence of an association with CVD observed in the present study reflects a greater robustness to residual confounding, selection bias, and reverse causation. To this extent, our findings may support claims that previous observational estimates of ETS exposure and its attributable risk are overestimated (63,64), However, none of these studies are policy evaluations, and direct comparisons with these previous estimates of the effect of ETS are difficult due to the common practice of treating ETS exposure as a dichotomous variable (9,(75)(76)(77).…”

The relationship between smoking, alcohol, and substance abuse and psychiatric diseases among adolescents treated in a child and adolescent psychiatry inpatient unit

“…In many studies, smoking is high in adolescents with previous depressive symptoms. 13,14 The results of a longitudinal epidemiological study of a population of 10,800 (adolescence to early adulthood) in the USA showed that the link between depressive symptoms and substance abuse was bidirectional. Another study found that higher levels of depression in adolescence were associated with more frequent abuse of psychoactive substances in early adulthood; it emphasized that more frequent substance abuse was also associated with an increase in the intensity of depressive symptoms after a few years.…”

Secondhand Smoke Exposure in Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Results From the 2015 National Adult Tobacco Survey

“…Even if SHS exposure does not lead to smoking in this age group, it still poses significant health risks; SHS exposure is a preventable risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease through the development of endothelial dysfunction [22], lung and breast cancer [23], upper and lower respiratory tract infections, asthma [6], and COPD [7]. Additionally, SHS exposure is associated with mental health issues in non-smoking adolescents, including stress, major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder [24]. Interventions to reduce SHS exposure among adolescents and young adults in Lao PDR are needed to prevent future tobacco use and associated morbidity.…”