Air date: January 23, 2011

Host: Jeremy Shere, PhD

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Primary Care segments are presented
by IU Health Physicians.

Did you Know? is presented by Wishard Health Services, becoming Eskenazi Health in 2014.

I’m Jeremy Shere.

It’s bad enough that secondhand smoke can wreak havoc on the lungs of non-smokers. But did you know that secondhand smoke may also cause mental health problems in kids?

Around two of every three kids in the United States ages three to eleven are exposed to secondhand smoke. And one out of five kids ages nine to 17 have some type of mental disorder.

Suspecting there may be a link between those statistics, British scientists looked at more than 900 nonsmoking children between the ages of four and eight. They measured their exposure to smoke and surveyed their parents about their kids’ mental and emotional health.

The kids with the most exposure to secondhand smoke showed the strongest evidence of mental health problems.

The study doesn’t explain why smoke exposure could affect mental health. And factors other than inhaling secondhand smoke may be at play. But the study strongly suggests yet another reason why smoking puts kids at risk.

And now you know.

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Did You Know is presented by Senior Care at Wishard, answering your questions at Living, Longer, Better.

Additional Resources:

• Read more about the British second-hand smoke study, from Reuters.