Low prevalence of smoking among patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Tobacco smoking is common among psychiatric patients, especially among those with schizophrenia, where the prevalence is extremely high, 74% to 88%, compared with 45% to 70% in patients with other psychiatric diagnoses. Patients with anxiety disorders are less well investigated in this respect, particularly obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients. Eighty-three psychiatric outpatients with OCD and 110 members of the Swedish OCD Association responded to questions concerning their smoking habits. Among OCD patients, 14% were current smokers (compared with 25% in the general population of Sweden), 72% had never smoked, and 11 previous smokers had stopped, mostly without any difficulties. Since a decreased smoking rate among OCD subjects was confirmed, the smoking prevalences in schizophrenia and OCD, respectively, seem to represent either end of a continuum, and OCD may also differ significantly from other anxiety disorders in this respect. Possible implications of this finding for the purported frontal lobe dysregulation in OCD are discussed. Copyright (C) 1999 by W.B. Saunders Company.