Background:
Smoking status defined as self-report of smoking indicated that smokers use the cigarettes per day. Comparison with the general population, schizophrenia smoke more cigarettes per day. Schizophrenia smokers who made quit attempt and reduced the number of cigarette per day were more likely to succeed in quitting smoking. The benefit of identification of factors significantly associated with smoking status may lead to mental health care providers conducting the smoking cessation intervention for this population. This study aiming to examine the direct and indirect relationship of the predicting factors of smoking status in schizophrenia smokers.

Methods:
Multistage random sampling was used in the Department of Mental Health of Thailand. Six tertiary psychiatric hospitals were randomly selected from all regions, and 400 schizophrenic smokers were selected by the purposive sampling technique. All participants completed 12 questionnaires, with reliability ranging from 0.72 to 1.00, and Validity ranging from 0.86 to 1.00. The acquired data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and Path analysis.

Results:
The findings revealed that the hypothesized model fit the empirical data and could explain 48% (R² = .48) of the variance of smoking status. Moreover, nicotine dependence and depression had a significant negative direct effect on smoking status (ß= -.21, ß= -.52). Readiness to quit had a significant positively direct effect (ß= .39) on smoking status and intensity of smoking cessation intervention had a significant positively indirect effect (ß= .14) on smoking status through readiness to quit.


[Final model and goodness of fit statistics of smok]



Conclusions:
The results demonstrated that the factors influencing smoking status were readiness to quit, nicotine dependence, intensity of smoking cessation intervention, and depression. Identifying these variables can be used to develop appropriate smoking cessation interventions to help smokers with schizophrenia success quitting smoking.