Tobacco Addiction: Quitting Smoking Through Systemic Approach

Abstract

Background: The main reason for carrying out this study was the wish to understand the reasons leading to smoking, the influence of such behavior in people's ways of thinking, as well as methods of quitting. It was necessary to understand that the dependents are more than their beliefs, family, social life, religion, profession, and paradigms. Aim: Smokers who want to quit smoking through their cognitive system transformation. Objectives: The objective of this project was to help patients quit smoking through systemic approach and, consequently, to help them face quitting methods more comfortably and safely and also to avoid relapse. Methods: This project started from a systemic model that is based on the conscience of the essential interrelation and interdependence state of all physical, biologic, psychological, social, and cultural phenomena. Support brief therapy and support group were the resources used during this research. As well as these methods, some patients, assisted by a medical team, underwent drug therapy. Therapeutic techniques (such as verbal techniques; action; creation of contexts; opening to the emerging narratives; paradoxical; structural; strategic; and the problem externalizations) were developed both in support brief therapy and support group. Results: The quantitative results will be presented here to show the effectiveness of the project developed. The most important information is the number of people who interrupted tobacco dependence: 322 (70%) out of 460 quit smoking, of which 186 (58%) were men and 136 (42%) were women. Among the men who quit smoking, 41 were in the support group, 76 were in the support brief therapy, and 69 were in both. Among the women, 43 participated of the group therapy, 48 of the support brief therapy and 45 were in both; 48 men and 25 women took antismoking medication, while 11 men and 2 women used patches. Relapse occurred in 26 out of 322 patients who had quit smoking, 9 out of the 26 restarted therapy, and 6 of them quit smoking. The patients who relapsed, 9 attended the support group (4 men and 5 women), 10 attended the support brief therapy (6 men and 4 women), and 7 attended both (4 men and 3 women). Those who restarted the treatment, 6 were in the support group (2 men and 4 women), 3 were in the support brief therapy (1 man and 2 women), and no one was in both. Among the patients who quit smoking, 2 were in the group work (1 man and 1 woman), 4 were in the individual therapy (1 man and 3 women), and no one was in both. Conclusion: It was possible to verify that quitting smoking through systemic approach is effective, because it gives the individual, immersed in his/her family system, the opportunity to discern all his/her integrated and interdependent aspects (biologic, psychological and social phenomena) and, thus, restructure his/her paradigms and patterns of behavior.