Women who smoke are at greater risk of developing major depressive disorder, according to new research published in the October issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
The researchers studied a group of women in Australia, who had been followed for a decade as part of the Geelong Osteoporosis Study. [continue reading…]
Parents who enforce no-smoking rules at home are less likely to have teens who experiment with cigarettes, a new study finds. Youths who lived with nonsmokers but didn’t have a household smoking ban were nearly twice as likely to try cigarettes, compared to teens whose parents banned smoking.
“This basic intervention — implementing a household smoking ban — has the potential to promote anti smoking norms and to prevent adolescent smoking,” said lead study author Alison Albers, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Boston University School of Public Health. [continue reading…]
Smoking rates among teenagers can be reduced by training influential students within secondary schools to promote anti-smoking messages in their everyday conversations with their friends and peer group. This is the conclusion of authors of an article in this week’s edition of The Lancet.
Whether or not a young person smokes is strongly associated with their friends’ smoking behaviour. Peer pressure is often used to explain this finding, although evidence suggests that peer selection, whereby young people choose to associate with like-minded people engaging in similar behaviours, is also a cause. However, peer influence can be protective, leading to attempts to harness it to positive effect through peer education. [continue reading…]
Exposure to smoking in movies appears to be associated with adolescents’ risk of becoming established smokers who have used at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. [continue reading…]
