[thomasjames]

For those who have seen severe mental illness up close, this is not surprising in the least. Many, many people with schizophrenia or other disorders characterized by psychosis self-medicate heavily with cigarettes. Huddled masses of patients smoking outside are fixtures of most psychiatric treatment facilities.

[DanBC]

It's not particularly surprising, but it's good to have the evidence.

> Huddled masses of patients smoking outside are fixtures of most psychiatric treatment facilities.

It's a bit more complicated than "self treating with nicotine". A number of people go into hospital as non-smokers and come out as addicted smokers.

Smoking cessation combined with decent occupational therapy is important to reduce harm.

The knee-jerk banning of vaping in many hospitals is a bit worrying.

[tlarkworthy]

Well, its the same thing in prisons, so I always assumed its boredom/stress relief as the explanation for chain smoking.

[troygoode]

Or it indicates that prisons also contain many mentally ill inmates...

[bkmartin]

Which they do, but it is really tough to unwind the correlation/causation factors here.

[rabboRubble]

Err... you may have a significant overlap in the Venn diagram between prison population and people with schizophrenia. It's long known that mentally ill people make up a large part of the prison population.

[myth_drannon]

The same applies to office buildings

[k-mcgrady]

I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that those people are medicating the condition with nicotine. It is incredibly useful (anecdotally at least) in dealing with stress which is probably higher in people with mental issues.