Smoking: Onset And Maintenance Psychological Factors
Smoking: Onset And Maintenance
Discuss the role of psychological factors in explaining the onset and maintenance of smoking.
A health behavior is defined as a ‘behavior aimed at preventing disease’, such as eating a healthy diet (Karl & Cobb, 1996). Health impairing habits are those that include the use of behaviour pathogens, such as smoking (Matarazzo, 1984). Studies have been done which look at the extent to which our own behaviour is responsible for our health. In 1979, McKeown stated that ‘contemporary illness is influenced by the individual’s own behaviour and it is on modification of personal habits that health primarily depends’. He also found that the main cause of death in affluent societies is people’s own behaviours and in 1981, Doll & Peto found that of all cancer deaths, around thirty percent can be directly attributed to the behavioural factor, tobacco smoking.
It is now widely recognised that regular cigarette smoking is harmful to health and smoking cessation would have major and immediate health benefits for men and women of all ages (Novello, 1990). These include the risk of diseases such as lung cancer, first reported in 1954 (Doll & Hill), heart disease and emphysema (Peto et al. 1994). However, in spite of all the evidence about the detrimental effects of smoking, the world consumption of cigarettes is estimated at around six hundred billion cigarettes per year (Bawazeer et al. 1999). In Britain, the amount of cigarettes smoked per person, the prevalence of smoking, is decreasing, much more in men than women, but in comparison, women are starting to smoke more, therefore stopping more, whereas men may start less than women, but they are quitting less too (Ogden, 2000). A General Household Survery conducted in 1994 found that two-thirds of people want to give up smoking and the majority of people stated it is difficult to not smoke for the whole day.
Research investigating the reasons that people smoke has evaluated social, pharmacological and psychological factors. Recently there has been more focus on children and adolescents who smoke, since most try a puff of a cigarette (Ogden, 2000). It is difficult to distinguish between actual initiation and maintenance of smoking behaviour and in 1962, no common agreement on the reasons why people start to smoke had been reached. For the most part, the various explanations fell into the psychological realm (Seltzer, 1962). Now, it is widely accepted that the factors that influence...