Abstract:
Background: Tobacco smoking is health care issue in developed as well as in developing
countries. Research showed that, tobacco smoking among people with psychiatric disorders is
significantly higher than in the general population. Tobacco smoking has negative effects on
physical, mental and the financial well-being of people with mental health problems. However,
there are few studies done on tobacco dependence and associated factors among psychiatric
patients in sub–Saharan African countries including Ethiopia.
Objective: To assess the prevalence of tobacco dependence and associated factors among
psychiatric patients attending services at Jimma University Teaching Hospital.
Method: Across-sectional study was used among psychiatric patients. Data was collected by
interviewing 305 male and 117 female psychiatric patients who are attending service at Jimma
University Teaching Hospital psychiatric clinic. The Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence
(FTND) was used to assess tobacco dependence. Also, we have used CAGE to assess alcohol use
disorders. After double entry verification using Epi-Data version 3.1, data was exported to and
analyzed using SPSS version 20 for windows. The association between dependent and
independent variables was assessed by using bivariate and multivariate logistic regression.
Variables with p-value less than 0.05 in the multivariate logistic regression were considered as
independent predictors of tobacco dependence.
Results: The general prevalence of current tobacco dependence among the study participants
were 18.5%. Of this, 10.7%, 5.5% and 2.4% of them had moderate, high and very high level of
tobacco dependence, respectively. All tobacco dependent patients were males. In multivariate
logistic regression analysis it was found that, less attending a place of worship, high school
education, alcohol use disorder, daily khat chewing, having friends who smoke tobacco and
being diagnosed as schizophrenia were positively associated with tobacco dependence.
Conclusion: High prevalence of tobacco dependence was found among schizophrenic patients
followed by patients with bipolar disorders. Therefore, psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy is
crucial to reduce tobacco dependence and tobacco related medical illness.
