Smoking in affective psychosis: review about nicotine use in bipolar and schizoaffective disorders

Affective psychoses include those disorders with psychotic and affective symptoms described in the DSM-IV-TR. In these pathologies, the prevalence of nicotine dependence is very high. The objective here is to carry out a review of the relation between nicotine use and psychiatric disorders considered as affective psychoses at the epidemiological, clinical, prognostic and treatment levels. We review studies published in the PubMed database that include the keywords smoking, tobacco, nicotine and schizoaffective or bipolar disorder. Comorbidity of bipolar and schizoaffective disorder with nicotine consumption is 66-82.5% and 67%, respectively. On the basis of this review it can be concluded that smoking results in poorer prognosis and greater clinical seriousness of bipolar and schizoaffective disorders. Use of other substances, psychiatric diagnosis, clinical seriousness and caffeine consumption are risk factors for nicotine use. The most effective treatment approach is pharmacological treatment in combination with psychological interventions. The first-line medication for tobacco detoxification and dishabituation are substitution therapy (transdermal patches, sprays, sublingual tablets, sucking pills or nicotine chewing gums), varenicline and bupropion. The medically indicated treatment for psychotic symptoms is atypical antipsychotics, due to their better tolerability profile and better results in smoking cessation.