Are mental health nurses natural smoking cessation practitioners?

People who have mental health problems are vulnerable to smoking and smoking related diseases, so smoking cessation is an important health promoting role for mental health practitioners. Mental health nurses often have skills in person centred therapy and motivational interviewing that could help patients to consider change; yet they may not routinely apply their skills and knowledge to smoking cessation. We argue that mental nurses could use their specialist skills to help enable people with mental health problems to consider smoking cessation.