Background: Incitements to smoking cessation in patients hospitalized in mental health settings should be an ethical commitment for the mental health staff. However, worldwide studies have shown that the mental health staff is often reluctant to the implementation of smoking bans, and that the psychological attitude of the nursing staff may even sometimes wreck the efforts to ban smoking. No studies have been made in France investigating the psychological attitudes of mental health employees towards a complete smoking ban.
Methods: A given day, all the employees in daily contact with patients were individually interviewed regarding their smoking habits, their psychological attitude towards a complete smoking ban, their opinion regarding the consequences of a complete smoking ban on the behavior of patients, and, for smokers, their willing to change their smoking habits in the eventuality of a complete ban.
Results: All 264 employees working the day of the study responded to the questionnaire: 41.6% were smokers, 84% disagreed with a complete ban, 90% believed that a complete smoking ban would worsen the behavior of patients, and, among smokers, 68% were not willing to change their smoking habits.
Conclusions: In French mental health hospitals, employees in close contact with patients are not prepared, and in a large majority are opposed, to a complete smoking ban. Such a generalized opposition obviously raises barriers to smoking cessation interventions or other smoking reduction policies. The possible roles of unawareness and denial of the harmfulness of smoking in French mental health employees are discussed. The necessity of implementing educational programs for mental health employees is stressed.
Keywords: Nurses; Staff; Cigarettes; Psychiatry; Harmfulness
Published on: Aug 5, 2015 Pages: 10-14
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DOI: 10.17352/anpc.000003
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