JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Adolescents’ mental health problems significantly affect their long-term psychological and physical health. Although peer influence grows during adolescence, parental influence remains critical. Parental smoking is associated with behavioral problems in adolescents.

Objective:

As research in this area is limited, this study investigated the impact of parental smoking, particularly maternal smoking, on 2,761 adolescents’ mental health outcomes in South Korea.

Methods:

We analyzed data from a nationwide Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2012 to 2017. We employed analysis of variance and χ2 tests to compare adolescents’ and parents’ baseline characteristics and mental health.

Results:

Our logistic regression analyses revealed that mothers’ current smoking habits were significantly associated with their adolescents’ cognitive stress (odds ratio [OR] = 1.65 (95% CI: 1.06–2.56)), experiences of melancholy (OR = 2.09 (95% CI: 1.20–3.65)), and suicidal ideation (OR = 2.39 (95% CI: 1.17–4.88)). Furthermore, adolescents whose mothers were current smokers and had cognitive stress demonstrated higher cognitive stress (OR = 2.09), melancholy (OR = 2.27), and suicidal ideation (OR = 2.74) than those whose mothers were not smokers and had no cognitive stress.

Conclusions:

Efforts to improve adolescents’ mental health require considering their mothers’ smoking status and stress levels. This highlights the need to develop programs to enhance adolescent mental health, manage maternal stress, and promote smoking cessation.