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Psychological Symptoms and Smoking Among Turkish University Students
JOURNAL OF YOUTH RESEARCHES
Discussion
In this study, the correlation between psychological symptoms, age, gender, SES, paren-
tal smoking and smoking status in youth sample was examined. With t test analysis, it is
specified that psychological symptoms of smokers are dramatically higher than those of
non-smokers’. In a similar study (Yaşan, Gürgen, Özkan, & Oto, 2008), anxiety and de-
pression of smokers were found to be much higher than that of non-smokers, there has
not been found any significant difference between other symptoms. In a study conducted
by Talay, Kurt and Tuğ (2008) similar results in depressive symptom levels were found.
The main purpose of this research is the examination of relations between psychological
symptoms and smoking habit. As a result of logistic regression analysis, self-negativity
ad hostility explains smoking habit in a significant level while depression, anxiety and
somatization do not. The result regarding depression is dramatically different from pre-
vious research results (e.g.; Berg, Choi, Kaur, Nollen & Ahluwalia, 2009). In the research
conducted by Vinci, McWay and Carrigan, (2012), significant relations have been deter-
mined between incentive variables of smoking and different depression levels among
university students. In the study of Cargill et al. (2001), it is found that both having a
history of depression and a current depressed mood is related with the increase of
nicotine addiction risk.
The relations between smoking and depression are discussed in different ways in differ-
ent studies. Like this study, some researches recognize the depression as an independ-
ent variable which explains smoking status (Ren et al., 2016), others recognize cigarette
as an independent variable which causes depression. For example, in a study conducted
among women, compared to non-smokers, smokers have two times higher risk of show-
ing depressive symptoms, and the depression risk of the men who smoke one or more
packs is high (Benet, Wagner, Borges, & Medina-Mora, 2004). In a study where other
psychological symptoms are also taken into consideration, there has not been found any
difference between smokers and non-smokers about the risk of having obsessive-com-
pulsive disorder and anxiety, but major depression risk of smokers is found significantly
higher than that of non-smokers (Black, Zimmerman, & Coryell, 1999). These findings
demonstrate that there is a reciprocal relationship between smoking and psychological
symptoms (Glassman et al., 1990; Yazici, 2008).
In our study, anxiety levels of smokers are found higher than non-smokers’, but it is deter-
mined that anxiety does not explain smoking risk in a significant level. The result obtained
from the comparison of anxiety points of the groups is similar to the one of Collins and
Lopore (2009). Smoking is examined by being associated with different anxiety situations
(Fluharty, Taylor, Grabski, & Munafò, 2016). For example, compare to the individuals hav-
ing low level of social anxiety, individuals having high level of social anxiety have more
smoking frequency and their smoking tendency is stronger (Henry, Jamner, & Whalen,
