I wonder if smoking serves as a proxy for social interaction. I remember seeing someone else comment on another story about not liking smoking but liking smoking culture. And along those lines, maybe the following quote from the linked open access paper re: marital status might also suggest having a community of support might be helpful? Seems plausible to me, anyway.

> Participants who were female; never married or were divorced, widowed, or separated; had poverty index ratio less than 1.30; had less than 12 years of education, or had no health insurance were more likely to have self-reported depression.

Maybe. Or nAChRs or smokers exhibit sufficient narcissistic and hedonistic tendencies as to not off themselves directly.

Hey Reddit, my parents just retired and still haven't killed themselves yet, was I raised by narcissists?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's by reducing stress - because stress takes a massive toll over time

Nicotine has antidepressive effects through increasing bioavailability of serotonin. It also shines as an antipsychotic. I’m failing to find the study right off but something like 80-90% of schizophrenics are smokers.

Buspar works in smoking cessation therapy as it helps balance the drop in serotonin when quitting smoking.

There's a lack of nosological classification of meaningful sub-types of depression and their specific dysfunctions. It's currently scatter-gun, medieval treatments without bothering to measure or understand the systems affected.

100% agreed. The current system of "Sorry you feel suicidal / horribly depressed. Here are some meds that are statistically unlikely to help you but you won't know whether they help or not until ~60 days after you start taking them. What if these don't work? We'll shovel you a slightly different permutation of the same meds in hopes that what didn't work the last time will work this time. By the way, it will be another 60 days before you know whether the new meds are working or not" is terribly broken.

Is it any wonder that depressed and schizophrenic people smoke?

Doesn’t it also provide dopamine, which a depressed person might not be getting from their life activities?

You're right. It looks like there are studies that indicate that dopamine is also increased by nicotine.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2946180/

Edit: er, sorry, you were probably talking about Buspar, not nicotine in regards to dopamine. Buspar does increase seratonin and dopamine, both of which are tickled to varying degrees by nicotine.

No I was referring to nicotine, though I now see how I was ambiguous