Vaping is in your news feed for its regulation, impact on public health and effects on young people. So with growing awareness of the effects of vaping on health plus recent reforms to limit availability of vapes to pharmacies in Australia, many people will be thinking about quitting. They will also need support to do so.
That’s partly because so many vapes contain nicotine. Some 73% of Australians who currently vape said their last vape contained nicotine. This tends to be high-strength nicotine .
Mental health is another factor closely linked to vaping – whether people with mental health symptoms are likely to start vaping in the first place, how they fare when vaping, and whether they need additional support when trying to quit. Here’s what we know about how mental health is connected to vaping and where to go for support to quit. How are mental health and vaping linked? An estimated 4.
3 million Australians reported a mental health problem in the past 12 months. This includes anxiety and mood disorders (such as depression), which typically begin in adolescence to early adulthood . We know vaping and mental health (including anxiety and depression) are linked .
People who vape frequently are twice as likely to have a depression diagnosis compared with people who have never vaped. Australia’s National Drug Strategy Household Survey also shows people with more mental distress related to anxiety and depression were four times as likely to have vaped than were those wit.