Smoking among young adults has escalated, especially among young adults in universities and colleges. Even with the rising number of young adults engaging in smoking, many of them want to quit. Smoking has led to Universities’ need to support these students who wish to quit smoking. Therefore, universities have adopted interventions to help these students quit smoking. This report aims universities will adopt to help University students quit smoking.
Cognitive intervention
This intervention seeks to solve the smoking problem in individuals by addressing this problem at a conscious mind level. It does this by analyzing thoughts, recalls, experiences, and sanities. This intervention is effective in helping young adults quit smoking because they prefer more interactive ways to help them than the traditional non-interactive methods. Young adults’ lives have been influenced immensely by technology; therefore, trying to reach them with conventional non-interactive means would not move them to quit smoking.
This method requires the understanding that thoughts and emotions play a significant role in influencing young adults to smoke (Livingston et al., 2022). This intervention, therefore, seeks to support students in quitting smoking by altering their thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings affect young adults, and therefore altering them will help do away with their recurring smoking patterns. Cognitive interventions also seek to determine whether these young adults are physically dependent on a cigarette. Some of the cognitive interventions Universities can use are the following:
Cognitive behavioral therapy
This strategy of cognitive interventions involves restructuring the thoughts of young adults that prompt them to smoke. This intervention distorts and disorients the mindset and belief of the current cigarette users and their dependent on quitting. Cognitive behavioral therapy assimilates behavioral therapies such as changing habits to put prevention measures and avoid temptations to smoke. This intervention seeks to solve the current problems and change the behavior of individuals and their unhelpful thinking (van der Zweerde et al. 2019). This intervention first involves understanding the thoughts that influence young adults’ smoking habits.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is of significance in helping young adults to adopt cognitive coping skills, which are necessary to manage negative moods and help them to quit smoking. These skills include identifying environmental and social prompts that trigger the urge to cigarette smoking, social support, changing thinking patterns, and personalizing problem-solving strategies. Cognitive behavioral therapy has proven highly effective in ensuring young adults quit smoking without reverting to their old ways.
Mindfulness interviewing
This intervention combines cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation, and mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to adopting an attitude free from judgment to support students struggling with the habit of smoking to quit. Meditation involves individuals learning to get in touch with their actual thoughts and emotions (Roche et al, 2019). Young adults should feel there is no judgment placed upon them while performing this exercise. Other mindfulness maneuvers include Yoga, mindfulness practices, body scan exercises and mindfulness stretching.
Yoga has proved effective in helping young adults quit smoking as it relieves stress and influences influences individuals’ viewpoint towards life positively. Stress mostly leads to relapse, and therefore, yoga curbs this by ensuring that individuals who practice it have a clear mind. Mindfulness stretching seeks to enable individuals to stretch their minds to acquire a better consciousness of their bodies and thoughts. In conclusion, mindfulness intervention helps young adults quit smoking though training them to take more control of what they think and feel.
Motivational interviewing
It is a patient-centered style of counseling that seeks to help people to discover and resolve uncertainty about behavior change. This means that it helps young adults quit smoking by allowing them to seek within themselves for the reasons prompting them to have doubts about breaking the cycle of smoking (Lindson et al., 2019). Motivational interviewing is a counseling method that involves improving a patient’s motivation to change through four guiding principles, which include the following; listen with empathy, empower the patient, understand the patient’s own motivations, and resist the righting reflex.
Recent studies have shown that motivational interviewing is equivalent to or better compared to other treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (Thompson et al., 2019). This is because it gives the young adults the freedom to decide individually whether they want to quit smoking rather than being told or compelling them to do so. This method would therefore be effective on young adults because they mostly want to feel like they are free to choose their own fate.
Nicotine Replacement Therapy
Nicotine replacement therapy is a type of treatment that gives small doses of nicotine to relieve symptoms and stop cravings that occurs when a chain smoker tries to quit using nicotine (Hajek, P., Phillips-Waller, et al., 2019). This means that this intervention works by reducing the severity of withdrawal symptoms in those individuals trying to stop their smoking habit. The use of nicotine replacement therapy enables young adults who want to quit smoking by providing a safe alternative by eliminating exposure to the harmful effects of tobacco. Nicotine replacement therapy addresses both physical and psychological challenges of nicotine addiction, making it a better means of intervention to help university students to quit smoking.
The use of nicotine patches is the most common measure for nicotine replacement therapy. Nicotine replacement therapy, however cannot be used independently by universities to help students quit smoking. This intervention needs to be supplemented by other interventions in order to be highly effective. It deals with the individuals’ physical reliance on smoking and therefore creates the need for interventions that would deal with the mental aspect.
Peer Support Groups
This intervention is a form of encouragement and emotional assistance provided by someone who has experienced similar issues as to what the young adults seeking to quit smoking are facing. Young adults, in most cases, struggle to quit smoking on their own without the help of others (Shalaby et al., 2019). Peer support groups, therefore, provide a platform where these young adopts interact with individuals who can relate to what they are going through. These individuals provide motivation to young adults by proving that quitting smoking can actually be done despite being difficult.
Incorporate smoking cessations into health curriculums
Universities can adopt this intervention by providing information to students on the harmful effects of smoking. This will thereby prompt those students that already suffer from the habit of smoking to have the will to quit (Asfar, T., McClure et al., 2019). This intervention also works by ensuring that those students who have not yet started smoking do not start smoking because they are aware of the risks. This smoking cessation may include the following; counseling, physician advice, and pharmacotherapy, which will reduce the risk of students engaging in smoking and help those who smoke to quit. Smoking cessations advance the health status and improve the quality of life.
Smoke-free campus policy
Universities can enforce smoke-free campus policy which provides that smoking within the institution is prohibited. This policy will help to eliminate on-campus cigarette smoking which will encourage a more eco-friendly and cleaner campus environment (Robertson et al., 2020). It also works to reduce indirect smoking, which may, in turn, lead to health risks caused by smoking or influence those students who do not smoke to start smoking. This intervention is effective in stirring students with the habit of smoking to quit.
Tobacco cessations programs
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and diseases among the youth. Tobacco cessation programs involve universities formulating and enforcing policies that prohibit the use of tobacco on campus (Redfield et al.,2020). Policies that ban tobacco use on campus have proved to lead to the fall of cases of smoking among students in universities. Universities should therefore adopt this policy to support students to quit smoking. Tobacco cessation programs will be helpful, especially to young adults who are easily moved by the internet and pressure from their peers.
Ban on campus tobacco advertising
This involves the university prohibiting the advertisement of tobacco products that may prompt students to start smoking and act as a challenge for others who want to quit. This will maintain the health of students in the learning institutions and reduce the cases of addiction. Advertising on campus will negatively impact students who want to quit smoking since this advertisement is attractive and made to convince individuals to smoke (Ahmed, J., Mathialagan et al. 2019). This intervention, however has not proved its effectiveness fully, but there is still a need for universities to adopt this intervention to support students to quit smoking.
In conclusion, Universities need to adopt the above interventions to support students struggling to quit smoking. The above interventions include both group or individual interventions and policy-level interventions. Group or individual interventions include cognitive behavior intervention, motivational interviewing, mindfulness-based intervention, nicotine replacement therapy, and peer support group. Policy level intervention, on the other hand, includes implementing policies such smoke free campus policies, tobacco-free programs, banning tobacco advertising on campus, and incorporating smoking cessations in health curriculums in universities. I believe these interventions will be highly effective when adopted by universities seeking to support their students to quit smoking, especially when used to supplement each other.
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