Smoking Ban in Mental Health Units

posted: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 | Categories: Smoking

One year has passed since the smoking ban in public places was introduced in the UK. The ban has been a huge success and has resulted in over 40,000 people quitting the habit and far fewer hospital admissions as a result of smoking related illness. Obviously the ban on smoking within regular hospitals has been in force for many years. Anyone who passes a large hospital will be used to the rather incongruous sight of patients in their surgical gowns having a cigarette.

Last year's ban did not, however, include the buildings and grounds of mental health units, to allow patients the necessary time to give up. This concession is about to end and the smoking ban will be applied to all areas, both inside and in the grounds, of these units. Various charities have been campaigning to ensure that when the ban is enforced the patients in these units, many of whom are extremely vulnerable, will be provided with suitable support in quitting and offered recreational alternatives to smoking. The mental health charity, Mind, says that over 70 per cent of patients in mental health units are smokers with 51 percent of patients suffering from bipolar disorder smoking twenty or more cigarettes a day. This compares with 8 per cent of the general population.

Mental health patients are the only group in the UK who do not have the right to smoke in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Earlier this year three patients from Rampton Hospital in Nottinghamshire went to the High Court to try to win the right to smoke in their own rooms. They lost the fight. They argued that being denied the right to smoke "in the privacy of their own home" was a violation of their human rights.

Mental Health Services, the UK body that deals with patients and units, said that the ban would improve the general health of mental health patients and add to the quality of their lives rather than detract from it, though it is doubtful that all the smokers in these units will agree.

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