What is it about?
Smokers try to quit all the time. What can help them to do so effectively? Lots of research has been done on this. This is an attempt to take a look at such research so far done and to summarise their findings. This paper also asks the questions how, and also why, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries influence this kind of research.
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Why is it important?
This paper is written keeping the Sri Lankan audience in mind. It challenges traditional beliefs about smoking cessation such as nicotine skin patches/ lozenges are the best treatment and everyone needs help from health workers to quit smoking. Tobacco and pharmaceutical industries arguably wanted to portray smoking cessation as something really difficult. This paper takes, although a brief, look at this as well.
Perspectives
I found that psychiatrists, including trainees, and other doctors such as chest physicians and general practitioners, in Sri Lanka, have little to refer to when they want to help their patients to quit smoking cigarettes. Although, this paper is not a treatment guideline, I tried to lay the foundation for such a Sri Lankan guideline in the future. I also wanted to share the important findings that many, if not majority, of smokers quit successfully without medical help, and also that nicotine replacement may not be the ideal cessation treatment. Many reviews on this type of topics (e.g. Cochrane reviews) tend to ignore the obvious influence by the tobacco industry and the Big Pharma that is involved with smoking cessation treatments. I tried not to fall into that trap.
Dr. Mahesh Rajasuriya
University of Colombo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A review of interventions for smoking cessation, Sri Lanka Journal of Psychiatry, June 2017, Sri Lanka Journals Online (SLJOL),
DOI: 10.4038/sljpsyc.v8i1.8133.
You can read the full text:
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