SS 16.00-17.30 Special sessions
Method: Each year from 1978 to 1995 an independent random sample (n=5,000) of the Finnish population (15-64 yrs.) has been selected from the National Population Register. A questionnaire, dealing with health behaviours, has been mailed annually to the sample. The main questions of interest have been kept unchanged to ensure comparability between the years studied. The response rate has varied from 67% to 86%. For the analyses of this study, all the information from the eighteen cross-sectional postal surveys was pooled together (n=70,000).
Results: There was a strong, dose-response relationship between cigarette smoking and depressive symptoms in both genders at the bivariate level. The likelihood for being depressive was nearly three-fold - OR for men 2.62 (95% Cl's: 2.35-2.93) and OR for women 2.73 (95% Cl's: 2.23-3.35) - in heavy smokers compared with never smokers. After adjusting for potential confounding factors (age, marital status, education, alcohol consumption, coffee drinking, leisure-time physical activity) in multiple logistic regression, we found that male smokers were 55% (p<0.0001), and female smokers 47% (p<0.0001) more likely to have depressive symptoms compared with non-smokers.
Conclusions: Cigarette smoking is related to depressive symptoms with a strong, significant, dose-response way after controlling for several important confounding variables in multiple logistic model.
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