Promoting smoking cessation following a smokefree mental health stay
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Promoting Smoking CEssation and PrevenTing RElapse to tobacco use following a smokefree mental health inpatient stay (SCEPTRE programme): a pilot study
IRAS ID
300176
Contact name
Elena Ratschen
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 30 days
Research summary
The proportion of people with mental illness who smoke tobacco is very high compared to the general population. It can reach figures over 70% among those with schizophrenia and in hospitalised patients with severe mental illness – compared to only 15% in the general population. As people with mental illness are usually heavily addicted to tobacco, smoking causes large amounts of disease and deaths in this group, often from cardiovascular, respiratory illness and cancer. Smoking has been recognised as the single largest cause of health inequalities for people with mental illness. People with mental illness lose up to 20 years of life mainly to the consequences of smoking. Although mental health patients often want to quit and can do so successfully, smoking is rarely addressed in mental health care. In many mental health settings in England, a historic ‘smoking culture’ can still be found. Guidance from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends that mental health settings become entirely smokefree, and mental health patients should have access to evidence-based stop smoking treatment.
For many patients, receiving treatment in a smokefree inpatient environment will be a rare experience of abstaining from tobacco in their lives. Currently, no strategies to help maintain or achieve a smokefree lifestyle and avoid relapse post-discharge exist. This means that most patients will return to old smoking behaviours within days of discharge.
We have developed an intervention to support mental health inpatients after discharge in maintaining or achieving abstinence from tobacco smoking, building on existing evidence, behaviour change theory, and working closely with service users and mental healthcare professionals. Therefore, the aim of this pilot study is to test the intervention, manuals and research materials for fitness of purpose, and conceptual and logistic flaws on pilot acute mental health wards in each of the participating Trusts.
REC name
South Central - Hampshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/SC/0384
Date of REC Opinion
14 Dec 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion