Toolkit eliminates tobacco-related health
disparities for mentally ill
The University of Colorado Denver in collaboration with the State Tobacco Education and Preventative Partnership (STEPP) has created The Mental Health Provider Toolkit for smoking cessation among the mentally ill.
The toolkit is a resource containing information such as existing guidelines, expert consensus and extensive literature review for mental health providers to assist the mentally ill in smoking cessation. It includes information explaining why the disparity exists – reasons such as biological predispositions and psychological considerations – as well as implications for specific mental disorders.
People with mental illnesses often die 20 years sooner than the general population, often a result of their disproportionately higher rates of tobacco use. In the state of Colorado, 7.7 p.c. of the adult population has a major mental illness, a substantial portion of that population (41 p.c.) use tobacco.
UCD doctors Chad Morris, Jeanette Waxmonsky, Alexis Giese and Mandy Graves, MPH, are working to reduce the tobacco-related health disparities among people with mental illnesses.
“ Providing the toolkit to mental health providers across Colorado is a way of reaching out to those in need and letting them know they are not alone in the fight against nicotine addiction,” said Waxmonsky.
For more information, please contact Chad Morris, PhD, at chad.morris@uchsc.edu or Jeanette Waxmonsky, PhD, at jeanette.waxmonsky@uchsc.edu, or call (303) 315-9155.
