SHBC1600

E.C.NG¹, C.K.YIP¹, M.M.HENDRIKS¹

Institute of Mental Health¹

The close link between smoking and schizophrenia spectrum disorders has been a topic of interest, with researchers finding high correlations between tobacco use and such disorders (Scott et al., 2018). Cigarette smoking has also been found to affect the concentrations of antipsychotics such as olanzapine and clozapine (Tsuda et al., 2014), which could potentially affect treatment outcomes, increased relapse rates and rehospitalisations. It is also connected to physical illnesses, namely lung cancer, as well as socio-economic issues. Therefore, it is imperative that we explore the prevalence of smokers among the population of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Extraction of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders was done from data mined from admissions in an acute male ward from Jul to Dec 2020. They were categorized into smokers and non-smokers. The results were analysed with Microsoft Excel.

Out of 131 patients analysed, 39.7% smoked regularly. 52.4% of readmissions were smokers too.

The above results emphasize the strong need for Case managers to explore patients’ smoking habits, psychoeducate and direct patients to resources to help with smoking cessation as the national Singapore average of smokers is only 14%.