Purpose: Heavy
smoking is strongly associated with schizophrenia. Schizophrenics
are the heaviest smokers in the mental health population and have
higher rates of smoking than the general population. This may be
because they are self-medicating in order to alleviate the negative
cognitive effects of the disorder and from typical antipsychotic
drug treatment.
Objectives: Schizophrenic patients are motivated to smoke in
an attempt to self-medicate for physiological reasons associated
with cognition benefits and subjective reasons similar to those of
non-psychiatric smokers, such as to decrease anxiolytic effects and
stress, but schizophrenia patients report more pleasure from the
ritual behavior of
smokingthat was
associated with their antipsychotic
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