A researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences was awarded a $1.7 million grant to study how smokers respond to emotional distress, school officials announced on Wednesday.
Meredith Addicott, a part of the university’s Center for Addiction Research and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, received the grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, according to a news release from the school. Her study will examine the tolerance levels of smokers to better understand why some successfully quit while others return to their old habits.
“We’re looking at stress and its relationship to smoking because we know that some people smoke to address stress,” said Addicott, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. “Stress can come from so many things – traffic, family, work – and stress can really trip people up when they are trying to quit smoking.”