Smoking habit is hampering the healthy lifestyles of men and women both nowadays and it has become a serious health problem of most of the people nowadays. In the world almost more than 1.1 billion people are smoking tobacco in 2015 as per the report of World Health Organization. In addition it is observed that, tobacco smoking can kill half of the smoker and almost 6 million people are dead due to active tobacco smoking. On the other hand 890000 people face ultimate consequences due to passive smoking as they are exposed to second-hand smoking ( WHO, 2019). In order to reduce the number of smokers, it is required to help the tobacco smokers by many ways. Psychological interventions are one of the most effective ways for the cessation of smoking.
a) It is quite evident that the psychological therapies are very effective in the cessation of smoking and it is observed that, the success rate of psychological therapy is quite good in comparison to other therapies of smoking cessation. The psychological interventions of smoking therapy can be delivered by the practicing clinicians, smoking cessation specialist and also by the health care administrator. Various recent studies showed that, the in case of quitting smoking behavior psychological therapy has showed significant positive results. One of the most effective psychological therapy for smoking cessation is group therapy or group counselling process and this method is proven to be more effective therapy for the persons who wants to quit smoking than self-help materials. Group therapy refers to the therapy in which one or more psychotherapist treat a small group of people who are addicted to smoking. In a group therapy, one or more therapist manage a team of 5 to 15 patients. The formed group, generally meets for 1- 2 hour once in a week. Among the all members of the group, some people participate in individual therapy along with group therapy and other people only participate in the group sessions. As a part of this internet based health promotional programme as a preventive measure can be initiated ( Cummins et al., 2003). The group therapy may provide support to the each and every member of the groups and as a result it become easier to resolve the problem by working as a team (Maryland's Tobacco Resource Center, 2019). Along with the group therapy, another therapy that can be used as an effective way of helping the smokers to quit smoking is positive psychotherapy (PPT). In this therapy, the main focus is on enhancing and reinforcing of a person’s positive emotional states. In various studies it is observed that, PPT is for smoking cessation has become an integral part of the smoking cessation therapy. Generally, psychotherapists and psychologists classify the human emotion into two sections that is negative and positive emotions. Positive emotions are those emotions that can support the long-term and short term mental wellbeing and emotional support to that person. On the other hand the negative emotions refers to the such emotions that tend to take way from long-term and short term well-being of the person ( Nott, 2014). As a part of PPT, the therapists drives their patients towards a set of psychological exercises that is designed to enhance the level of positive emotional states of patients. The application of change model may be effective in the smoking cessation and study in Japan had also showed the effectiveness ( Otake & Shimai, 2001).
b) The effectiveness of the group behavior therapy is supported by various studies. The study of Stead, Carroll & Lancaster (2017), showed the effectiveness of group behavior therapy in the cessation of smoking. In this study, authors used randomized control trial method to select the subject population. The people who are under the follow up program of this therapy are included in this study. The overall results of their showed that there was increase in cessation of smoking by the use of group behavior therapy N = 4395, risk ratio (RR) 1.88, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.52 to 2.33, I2 = 0%). Moreover, they also observed that the group behavior is also proved to be fruitful while comparing with the no intervention group (9 trials, N = 1098, RR 2.60, 95% CI 1.80 to 3.76 I2 = 55%). So it can be concluded from their study that group therapy is more effective than that of the self-help and other low-intensity interventions. On the other hand the study of Kahler et al. (2014), supported the acceptability and feasibility of adding the PPTS in the treatment of smoking cessation process. In this study it was observed that, the participants of this study, had reported about their satisfaction related to the counselling and they also enjoyed the positive approach of the treatment. In the final study results, it was noted that the PPT-S treatment is 31.6% more effective than that of the conventional therapy of smoking cessation within the time period of 6 months only. In addition, the PPT-S is also capable of reducing the symptoms of various depressive disorders among the smokers. The change model showed successful result in cessation of smoking in Japan and in this study almost 1558 people had participated (Otake & Shimai, 2001). Hence, it can be concluded that, the incorporation of the PPT-S into the conventional treatment of smoking cessation. In several studies the effectiveness of PPT-S has been proven while comparison with the standard smoking cessation process.
Hence, it can be concluded that the use of psychological therapy is very much effective in the cessation of smoking and it is observed that such therapies are much more effective than that of the conventional therapies. The Group counselling therapy and PPT-S process are very important for the cessation of smoking.
References
Cummins, C. O., Prochaska, J. O., Driskell, M. M., Evers, K. E., Wright, J. A., Prochaska, J. M., & Velicer, W. F. (2003). Development of review criteria to evaluate health behavior change websites. Journal of Health Psychology, 8(1), 55-62.
Kahler, C. W., Spillane, N. S., Day, A., Clerkin, E. M., Parks, A., Leventhal, A. M., & Brown, R. A. (2014). Positive psychotherapy for smoking cessation: Treatment development, feasibility, and preliminary results. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 19-29.
Maryland's Tobacco Resource Center (2019). Psychosocial Interventions | MDQuit. Mdquit.org. Available at: https://mdquit.org/cessation-programs/psychosocial-interventions [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].
Nott, L. (2014). Positive Psychotherapy Helps Smokers Quit. Addiction Treatment | Elements | Drug Rehab Treatment Centers. Available at: https://www.elementsbehavioralhealth.com/substance-abuse/positive-psychotherapy-helps-smokers-quit/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].
Otake, K., & Shimai, S. (2001). Adopting the stage model for smoking acquisition in Japanese adolescents. Journal of health psychology, 6(6), 629-643.
Stead, L. F., Carroll, A. J., & Lancaster, T. (2017). Group behaviour therapy programmes for smoking cessation. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, (3).
WHO (2019). Tobacco. Who.int. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tobacco [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].
