Despite the similar levels of motivation to quit, people with mental illness face multiple barriers to seek proactive help to quit smoking when in the community.

In mental health settings, many patients are inpatient for many months and sometimes several years at a time. This is the best opportunity to provide them with comprehensive and intensive support to quit smoking over extended period.

There are three things that make a hospital site in UK smokefree: ¹

1. Every frontline professional discussing smoking with their patients
2. Stop smoking support offered on site or referral to local services
3. No smoking anywhere in buildings or grounds

Mental hospital sites in England were expected to be smoke-free by now. However, these sites have numerous unique challenges in achieving this. Policies to achieve smoke-free ‘sites’ will have an impact on practice only if all staff working in these settings are empowered with up-to-date knowledge and skills to support their patients in quitting smoking. The purpose of this e-learning course is to provide this information to busy clinicians in easy to use practice oriented way.

This e-learning course is created using diverse range of resources and UK’s national guidelines, and is intentionally of less than 2 hours duration bearing in mind how busy frontline healthcare professional are. It is designed to:

1. Empower mental health professionals with the latest evidence-based knowledge about smoking cessation interventions based on UK’s national guidelines
2. Provide the mental health professionals with practical tools to make Smokefree Mental Health a reality.

This course has:

• Interactive quizzes
• Discussion on scenarios commonly faced by the mental health professionals
• Workshops on smoking cessation tools

Reference: 1 – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-smoking-and-mental-health/health-matters-smoking-and-mental-health