1.
Lung cancer, hypertension, heart disease, birth defects—we are all too familiar
with the dangers of smoking. But add to that list a frightening new
concern—mental illness. According to some controversial new findings, if smoking
does not kill you, it may, quite litter, drive you to despair.
2. The tobacco industry openly pushes its product as something to lift your mood
and soothe anxiety. But the short-term feel-good effect may mask the truth: that
smoking may worsen or even trigger anxiety disorders, panic attacks and
depression, perhaps even schizophrenia. 3. Cigarettes and
mental illness have always tended to go together. An estimated 1.25 billion
people smoke worldwide. Yet people who are depressed or anxious are twice as
likely to smoke, and up to 88 percent of those with psychotic disorders such as
schizophrenia smokers. A recent American survey concluded that around half of
all cigarettes burn in the fingers of those with mental illness.
4. But the big question is why? The usual story is that the illness comes
first. Mentally ill people take up smoking, or smoke more to alleviate some of
their distress. Even when smoking seems to start before the illness, most
doctors believe that early but invisible symptoms of the disorder spark the
desire to light up. But perhaps something more sinister is going on.
5. A growing number of researchers claim that smoking is the cause, not
the consequence of clinical depression and several forms of anxiety. "We know a
lot about the effects of smoking on physical health, and now we are also
starting to see the adverse effects in new research on mental illness," says
Naomi Breslau, director of research at the Henry Ford Health Care System in
Detroit. 6. Breslau was one of the first to consider this
heretical possibility. The hint came from studies, published in 1998, which
followed a group of just over 1,000 young adults for a five-year period. The 13
percent who began the study with major depression were around three times more
likely to progress from being light smokers to daily smokers during the course
of the study, though there was no evidence that depression increased the
tendency to take up smoking. But a history of daily smoking before the study
commenced roughly doubled the risk of developing major depression during the
five-year period smoking, and it seems, could pre-date illness.
7. At first Breslau concluded that whatever prompts people to smoke might also
make them depressed. But as the results of other much larger studies began to
back the statistical link, she became more convinced than ever that what she was
seeing were signs that smoking, perhaps the nicotine itself, could somehow
affect the brain and cause depression. 8. One of these larger
studies was led by Goodman, a pediatrician. She followed the health of two
groups of teenagers for a year. The first group of 8,704 adolescents were not
depressed, and might or might not have been smokers, while the second group of
6,947 were highly depressed and had not been smokers in the past month. After a
year her team found that although depressed teenagers were more likely to have
become heavy smokers, previous experimentation with smoking was the strongest
predictor of such behaviour, not the depression itself. What is more important
is that teenagers who started out mentally fit but smoked at least one packet
per week during the study were four times more likely to develop depression than
their non-smoking peers. Goodman says that depression does not seem to start
before cigarette use among teens. "Current cigarette use is however, a powerful
determinant of developing high depressive symptoms." 9.
Breslau, too, finds that smokers are as much as four times more likely to have
an isolated panic attack and three times more likely to develop longer-term
panic disorder than non-smokers. It's a hard message to get across, because many
smokers say they become anxious when they quit, not when they smoke. But Breslau
says that this is a short-lived effect of withdrawal which masks the reality
that, in general, smokers have higher anxiety levels than non-smokers or
ex-smokers.
填空题
Paragraph 3 ______.
A. Doubt about the Usual Belief
B. Researchers' Opinions Divided
C. Positive Effects of Smoking as Advertised
D. Close Association Between Depression and Smoking
E. Breslau's Conclusion Supported by Another Larger Study
F. Effect of Smoking on Mental Health Initially Proved
填空题
Paragraph 4 ______.
填空题
Paragraph 6 ______.
填空题
Paragraph 8 ______.
填空题
Nowadays many doctors have become aware that smoking is not only a hazard to people's physical health ______.
A. have been proved to be misleading
B. but to their mental health as well
C. taking up smoking
D. involved fewer people
E. they started to smoke at an early age
F. but their level of anxiety increases when they quit smoking
填空题
The cigarette ads which claim that smoking can help soothe anxiety ______.
填空题
Breslau's study ______ than Goodman's but lasted longer.
填空题
To contradict Breslau's conclusion, many smokers say that they are less anxious when they smoke ______.