{"id":10506,"date":"2025-07-26T19:09:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T11:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/?p=10506"},"modified":"2025-07-26T19:09:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T11:09:20","slug":"teen-smokers-and-vapers-have-higher-rates-of-depression-and-anxiety-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/teen-smokers-and-vapers-have-higher-rates-of-depression-and-anxiety-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen smokers and vapers have higher rates of depression and anxiety, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Adolescents who use either e-cigarettes or conventional tobacco products (CTP)\u2014like cigarettes, cigars, hookah and pipes\u2014are significantly more likely to report symptoms of depression and anxiety than teens who don\u2019t use tobacco products at all, according to a study published in the open-access journal\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/mentalhealth\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pmen.0000370\">PLOS Mental Health<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Noor Abdulhay of West Virginia University, USA, and colleagues.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tobacco use and mental health challenges are known to have a complex, bidirectional relationship. Understanding the interplay between adolescent tobacco use and mental health is particularly important, since adolescence is a critical developmental period during which many health-related risk-taking behaviors begin. Moreover, there are increasing rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among adolescents in the U.S. as well as shifting patterns of tobacco use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the new study, researchers used data on tobacco use, depression and anxiety symptoms, among different demographics, from the 2021-2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey. Among the 60,072 middle and high school students who had completed all questionnaires in full, 21.37% had used tobacco products, with 9.94% using only e-cigarettes, 3.61% using only CTPs, and 7.80% using both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, 25.21% of respondents reported symptoms associated with depression and 29.55% reported anxiety symptoms. Compared to adolescents who had not used any tobacco products, users of e-cigarettes<em>&nbsp;or<\/em>&nbsp;CTPs displayed a potentially heightened risk of depression and anxiety, whilst those who used&nbsp;<em>both<\/em>&nbsp;CTPs and e-cigarettes had the highest odds of reporting mental health struggles<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The authors conclude that \u201cwhile causality cannot be determined, the results from this study showed that all forms of tobacco use were significantly associated with mental health issues. There is a need to continue promoting mental health support and implementing tailored interventions to combat all forms of tobacco use among adolescents\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>25.21% of respondents reported symptoms associated with depression and 29.55% reported anxiety symptoms. Compared to adolescents who had not used any tobacco products, users of e-cigarettes\u00a0or\u00a0CTPs displayed a potentially heightened risk of depression and anxiety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[547,1662,785,854,40,786],"class_list":["post-10506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsmakers","tag-clearthesmoke","tag-anti-smoking","tag-anti-smoking-campaign","tag-quit-smoking","tag-smoking","tag-smoking-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10507,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions\/10507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}