Factors Affecting Success
Quitting can be harder for individuals with dark pigmented skin compared to individuals with pale skin since nicotine has an affinity for melanin-containing tissues. Studies suggest this can cause the phenomenon of increased nicotine dependence and lower smoking cessation rate in darker pigmented individuals.
There is an important social component to smoking. A 2008 study of a densely interconnected network of over 12,000 individuals found that smoking cessation by any given individual reduced the chances of others around them lighting up by the following amounts: a spouse by 67%, a sibling by 25%, a friend by 36%, and a coworker by 34%. Nevertheless, a Cochrane review determined that interventions to increase social support for a smoker's cessation attempt did not increase long-term quit rates.
Smokers with major depressive disorder may be less successful at quitting smoking than non-depressed smokers.
Relapse (resuming smoking after quitting) has been related to psychological issues such as low self-efficacy or non-optimal coping responses; however, psychological approaches to prevent relapse have not been proven to be successful. In contrast, varenicline may help some relapsed smokers.
Read more about this topic: Smoking Cessation
Famous quotes containing the words factors, affecting and/or success:
“The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence,—luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition,—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,—equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)