Study links smoking to childhood traumas

By Leslie Papp Toronto Star Medical Reporter

MONTREAL A link between traumatic childhood events and smoking has
been found by researchers at the U.S. Centres for Disease Control.

``Heavy smoking in adults is related to their childhood experience,''
Dr. Robert Anda told an international medical conference here
yesterday.

Researchers surveyed 9,500 men and women in California and studied
their smoking patterns, health status and childhood experiences, said
Anda, chief of cardiovascular disease epidemiology at the centres.

About half were current or former smokers.

Anda said there was a clear connection between the amount that people
smoked and their level of ``adverse childhood experiences.''

He said almost 30 per cent of the men and 22 per cent of the women
reported growing up in a household where there was substance abuse most
often alcohol abuse.

About 27 per cent of women reported sexual abuse in childhood, as did
16 per cent of men. And incidents of mental illness in the family, mainly
depression, were described by 21 per cent of the men and 15 per cent of
women.

The heaviest smokers, and people who began smoking at a young age,
tended to have the largest number of such traumas.

``Smoking may be a coping device or a way of dealing with longterm
psychological pressures that go along with these experiences,'' Anda
said.

Traumatic events in childhood ``play an important role in initiating
smoking in adolescents, and in continued smoking throughout the
lifetime.''


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