Abstract
The present study was conducted to investigate the prevailing and social impact of the belief among the general population of Japan that cigarette smoking is an effective coping with stress. Data for this analysis were nationally representative and came from the National Survey of Trends of Health and Welfare by the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan, conducted on June 1st, 2000. The sample consisted of all households in the National Life Basic Survey of Japan, which was done by stratified random sampling design of 300 selected areas in Japan with respondents aged 12 years and older. The total number of valid questionnaires was 32,026 (15,217 male, 16,597 female, and 212 unidentified). The results showed two important points. First, the percentage of people who cited cigarette smoking as their strategy for coping with stress were 14.6% of the total sample (22.8% for men and 7.2% for women). These figures are estimated to represent approximately 50% of male smokers and 70% of female smokers. Second, smoking has a minor position among stress coping strategies; people who used smoking as the first coping strategy were only 1.9% and people who cited smoking as their coping strategy showed poor subjective health as compared with other coping strategies, such as problem solving coping or emotion focused coping. In conclusion, in spite of the widespread belief that cigarette smoking is an effective strategy to cope with stress, smoking is less likely to play an important role as stress coping among the general population in Japan. Therefore, it is critically important to reveal an evidence to counteract the prevailing belief in smoking as a coping strategy in order to improve national mental health as well as to strengthen disease prevention.
