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 The association was stronger for kids with one or more hours of
secondhand smoke exposure every day, the authors found. And the
results held when researchers accounted for parents’ mental health
and other factors.
“We showed a significant and substantial dose–response association
between (secondhand smoke) exposure in the home and a higher
frequency of global mental problems,” the authors write in Tobacco
Control.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two of
every five children in the US are exposed to secondhand smoke
regularly.
Alicia Padron of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
in Florida and colleagues in Spain analyzed data from the 2011 to
2012 Spanish National Health Interview Survey, in which parents of
2,357 children ages four to 12 reported the amount of time their
children were exposed to secondhand smoke every day.
The parents also filled out questionnaires designed to evaluate
their children’s mental health. According to the results, about
eight percent of the kids had a probable mental disorder.
About seven percent of the kids were exposed to secondhand smoke for
less than one hour per day, and 4.5 percent were exposed for an hour
or more each day.
After taking the parent’s mental health, family structure and
socioeconomic status into consideration, children who were exposed
to secondhand smoke for less than one hour per day were 50 percent
more likely to have some mental disorder compared to kids not
exposed at all.
And children who were habitually exposed to secondhand smoke for an
hour or more each day were close to three times more likely to have
a mental disorder.
In addition, kids exposed less than one hour per day were twice as
likely to have ADHD as kids who weren’t exposed, and children
exposed for an hour or more on a daily basis were over three times
more likely to have ADHD.
“The association between secondhand smoke and global mental problems
was mostly due to the impact of secondhand smoke on the
attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder,” the authors write.
The study looks at a single point in time and cannot prove that
secondhand smoke exposure causes mental health problems, the study
team cautions.
Frank Bandiera, a researcher with the University of Texas Health
Science Center in Houston who was not involved in the study, liked
that the researchers “controlled for parents’ mental health in the
new study because that could be a confounder.”
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But, he added, the study might be limited because, although the
questionnaires are thought to be valid, the mental disorders were
not actually diagnosed by physicians.
“We’re not sure if it’s causal or not,” Bandiera told Reuters
Health. “I think (the research) is still in the early stages and the
findings are inconclusive.”
But, he said, since secondhand hand smoke has been related to a lot
of physical diseases, parents should avoid smoking around their
kids.
“We need to sort it out more, so we’re not sure yet, but just as a
precaution, I don’t think parents should smoke at home - they should
keep their kids away from secondhand smoke,” Bandiera said.
Lucy Popova, from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and
Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said there
is a lot of evidence about the harms of secondhand smoke on physical
wellbeing.
“But research on effects of secondhand smoke on mental health have
been really just emerging and this study really contributes to this
growing body of evidence that exposure to secondhand smoke in
children might be responsible for cognitive and behavioral
problems,” she said.
Popova, who wasn’t involved in the study, said no amount of
secondhand smoke is safe – any exposure is bad.
“So parents should not expose their children – the best thing to do
is quit,” she said. “And this will not only not expose their
children to the secondhand smoke, but will also let them enjoy their
life with their children longer.”
SOURCE: http://bmj.co/1ajZCX4 Tobacco Control, online March 25,
2015.
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