[Previous and current use profile of psychiatric and general population]

To describe and to compare the previous and the current tobacco use profile between psychiatric population of secondary and tertiary levels of care and general population of basic health care.

Descriptive epidemiological/analytical cross sectional study with 378 participants from three Brazilian health services: a) Basic Unity of Health (BUH); b) Mental Health Ambulatory (MHA); c) Psychiatric Hospital (PH). The answers provided during individual interviews were registred in mobile device. Data were submitted to descriptive statistics, Fischer's exact test, analysis of variance and Kruskal-Wallis test.

In the PH all were daily smokers, noticing lower prevalence in MHA (94.1%) and in BUH (91.7%). Among the products utilized has highlighted manufactured cigarettes (98%), followed by roll-your-own cigarettes (39%). The average of cigarettes smoked per day (MHA=19,3, PH=25,3, BUH=17,2) and the percentage of multiple tobacco products users (MHA=28.1%, PH=55.3%, BUH=9.1%) were higher in PH. 73% of smokers exceed ≥ 4% of familiar income with tobacco. In PH were identified higher commitment. Smokers of PH were less advised to stop smoking (MHA=50%, PH=39.5%, BUH=50%).

The current tobacco use profile by psychiatric hospital smokers differs from the others. Besides higher tobacco dependency, they smoked a higher amount of cigarettes per day, compromised higher perceptual of personal income to buy tobacco and used multiples tobacco products as well as received less support to stop smoking.