Clinical Research Directory

Interventional Study on Smoking Reduction in Psychiatry

The smoking rate among people with mental disorders is higher than in the general population. Greater exposure to the harmful effects of tobacco partly explains the major inequality in life expectancy observed among people with mental disorders who, depending on the disorder and the study, live 10 to 25 years less than the general population, a gap mainly due to the occurrence of cardiovascular and respiratory pathologies, notably bronchial cancers. However, tobacco reduction actions specifically targeting these people remain insufficiently developed, particularly in psychiatry where this addiction is often banalized and its treatment neglected. The objective of this study is to evaluate an intervention ('Tabapsy') co-constructed with mental health services users, mental health professionals, and general practitioners and targeting adult patients followed in ambulatory psychiatry. The main objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on short-term smoking cessation (cessation for at least 7 days) among regular smokers at 3 months. Secondary objectives include evaluation of its cost-effectiveness and implementation. To this end, a national cluster-randomized controlled study will be carried out, supplemented by qualitative interviews to study the implementation of the intervention.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Patients with Dual Disorders

According to the WHO, 280 million people are diagnosed with depression, the prevalence of which is almost twice as high in women as in men, with the incidence among young people increasing in recent years. Another public health problem in Spain is tobacco consumption, with one in four adults being tobacco users. The presence of an addiction and another mental illness in the same patient is called dual disorder, and it is very common for depression to be associated with smoking. This is due to a shared biopsychosocial vulnerability between the two disorders. Although there are currently pharmacological treatments that address both disorders, their efficacy is limited; in this sense, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) offers a way to treat these dual disorders. TMS is a technique in which a magnetic field is applied to the cortex through a coil, generating an electric current that can induce changes in the different neurotransmitter systems, stimulating or inhibiting them. A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial is proposed to evaluate the efficacy of TMS in the treatment of a sample of 36 patients with resistant major depression and nicotine dependence. Both depression and smoking will be assessed at baseline, at various times during treatment and at the end of the study using psychometric tests, neurophysiological and biochemical assessments. It is expected that the experimental group will show improvements in depression, nicotine dependence and certain cognitive functions. TMS treatment of dual disorders (resistant depression + smoking) could represent a health and social advance, especially for women.