The Longitudinal Relationships between Depression and Smoking in Hardcore Smokers Using Autoregressive Cross-Lagged...

This study aimed to identify the directionality of the causal relationship and interaction between depression and amount of smoking over time in hardcore smokers using longitudinal descriptive analysis.

Secondary data from the Korean Welfare Panel Study were analyzed using autoregressive cross-lagged modeling. Participants included 342 hardcore smokers who participated in the 8th to 11th waves of the panel study.

Analyses revealed that change(s) in depression levels according to time had a significant positive relationship with the total amount of smoking per day (β=.29, β=.19, β=.17, p<.001), while change(s) in total amount of smoking per day according to time had a significant positive relationship with depression (β=.43, β=.50, β=.38, p<.001). Analysis of the cross-lagged effect between depression and total amount of smoking per day showed that depression at one time point had a significantly positive relationship with the total amount of smoking per day at the next time point (β=.14, β=.13, β=.13, p=.021), and that the total amount of smoking per day at one time point had a significant positive relationship with depression at the next time point (β=.04, β=.04, β=.03, p=.044).

The findings in the present study confirmed a cross-interaction between depression and total amount of smoking per day in hardcore smokers. The present findings could be used to develop appropriate smoking-related interventions.