Smoking addiction in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder indications in smoking addiction – a controlled study

Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms of individuals diagnosed with ADHD having smoking profiles and smoking addiction before the treatment process with healthy controls in order to understand better the mutual and complex relationship between ADHD and smoking.

Methods: Forty adults who had attended the clinics and policlinics of Bakırkoy Prof. Dr. Mazhar Osman Psychiatric Training Research Hospital and been directed to the ADHD outpatient clinic, 40 participants who had presented to the Smoking cessation outpatient clinic without any psychiatric disorder, and 40 healthy controls having no psychiatric disorders were included in the study. It was planned to apply the Sociodemographic Data Form, Wender-Utah Rating Scale (WUDO), Adult ADD/ADHD diagnosis and evaluation Inventory and Fagerstrom Nicotine Dependence Test (FNBT) to the participants.

Results: In our study, it was observed that the characteristics of the phenomena in the ADHD group relating to the attention deficit and hyperactivity were significantly higher than the scores of the phenomena in the other two groups statistically (p:0.001; p:0.001; p0.05). When compared with the control group, both the Fagerstrom scores and the scores relating to the ADHD of the other two groups are significantly high.

Conclusion: The fact that attention deficit, hyperactivity, characteristics relating to attention deficit, and WUDO scores in the smoking addiction group were high compared to the controls in our study supports the relation between ADHD symptoms and smoking. A significant difference could not be determined in the Fagerstrom scores between the ADHD group and the smoking addiction group, and in both groups, the scaling scores concerning the ADHD were determined as significantly high compared with the control group. We think the co-occurrence of the smoking addiction and ADHD symptoms is important in clinical evaluations. In most studies, ADHD is approved as an independent risk factor for development of Nicotine Dependence, This relationship could be explained by dopaminergic dysregulation both in nicotine dependence and ADHD. Treatment modalities of nicotine dependence supports this view. Further studies will shed light on this relationship and provide preventive strategies for development of nicotine dependence both in ADHD and normal population.