Northwestern Mental Health Center Smoking Case Study

Smoking among the clients, at Northwestern Mental Health Center, is a huge problem. Many of the clients smoke a half a pack or more a day. This becomes an issue for these clients in multiple aspects of their life. To begin with, smoking causes many physical issues with the body including Lung and Cardiovascular disease. It will affect their mental health as well. Nicotine is a stimulant, which increases the client’s heart rate and in turn can increase their anxiety as well as other aspects of mental health. Smoking can increase one’s blood pressure to unhealthy levels and cause more physical problems for the client. I believe that this topic is important to share with clients because many of them think that smoking is not as bad as everyone says it is. Many people with mental illnesses smoke to calm themselves down or even drowned out their voices that they may be hearing. …show more content…
However, we put on a health fair, for the clients that Northwestern Mental Health Center serves, as an additive benefit for the clients. We had the opportunity to check their blood sugar, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, heart rate, body mass index, and carbon monoxide levels. With these assessments in mind, we were able to discuss with clients how smoking can affect theses values that we obtained and how it may affect them in the future. I believe that the carbon monoxide test was the most beneficial for the clients. Those, who smoke, had a very high value for the level of carbon monoxide in their lungs. After we explained how that could affect their body, I think that they started to understand why they should quit smoking for their overall health. I believe that we successfully met our goal by providing education to their clients on how smoking can affect their overall health including mental health and also with resources, like the mental health center, which can and will help them, quit smoking if they are willing to do