Smoking Cessation Counseling on Inpatient Psychiatric Units

Holler et al examines smoking cessation counseling on inpatient psychiatric units. Individuals with serious mental illness are almost twice as likely to smoke tobacco as individuals without serious mental illness, yet smoking cessation counseling for this population is rarely prioritized. Evidence suggests, however, that smoking cessation interventions can be particularly effective when initiated during hospitalizations and that psychiatric patients benefit from these services. Compelled by this significant inequity in health services, in 2018 the authors developed and piloted a smoking cessation counseling program for an inpatient psychiatry unit at a safety-net hospital, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG)