People suffering from mental illness, who are also a chain smoker, are five times more likely to quitting smoking with the aid of someone.
According to research from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Centre, those people who has a mental problem can benefit from smoking-cessation counseling provided by their initial care physicians as this results in five times the success rate compared with those who treat smoking alone.
Assistant professor of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a researcher with Jonsson centre, Dr. Michael Ong, said that there are over 40% of smokers suffering from these co-occurring states, and this group experiences more trouble when trying to quit. If GPs could offer therapy, it would not only perk up their patients’ health but would also reduce on tobacco-related health care costs.
Ong stated that primary care GPs play a vital role in smoking-cessation counseling. Before this study, however, their success with this patient people was unclear.
They found that it would be more effective for primary care physicians to offer help in stopping smoking to the patients compared to patients who are treating themselves. However, in the situation of everything these physicians tries to do in a day, smoking cessation may be decreased.
It is also believe that, through the patients’ population, doctors should only take on one thing at a time, for example caring for an opiate addiction and choosing to manage the smoking cessation later. However, at the end of the day, they have proven that smoking cessation counseling is effective.
All smokers, both with and without alcohol, drug or mental disorders, are likewise to receive the chance to attend smoking-cessation counseling. However, those with the stated disorders quit smoking at equal levels whenever they got help from their doctor.
When smokers with co-morbid conditions get counseling the chances of quitting smoking is five times higher than doing it alone. Smokers that do not suffer from the other conditions have a three times better chance (349%).
The study proves that primary care physicians can aid smokers with alcohol, drug or mental disorders to quit their nefarious vice. Such smokers should be the primary target of smoking-cessation counseling in reducing the health burden of tobacco.
Throughout the study, Ong had taken note that there are far higher rates of smoking amongst people with schizophrenia, and people suffering from anxiety attacks, and depression disorders.
There are a total of 1,356 people, who participated in the study so that the researchers could examine the link between past-year smoking-cessation counseling and successfully quitting smoking habit.