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Relationships between status of psychological adjustment and learning new response patterns in behavioral treatment for smoking
Abstract
This was an investigation of possible relationships between pretreatment status of psychological adjustment and smoking treatment outcome. More specifically, the potential utilities of five variables associated with psychological adjustment (i.e., anxiety, depression, personal security, life stress, and assertiveness) for predicting smoking status at treatment end, 3-month follow-up, and 6-month follow-up were examined. Results indicated that psychological adjustment, defined as the five adjustment variables in combination, was not related to smoking status at any of the three assessment times; when the adjustment variables were considered individually, the only relationship identified was between life stress and end-of-treatment smoking status. More specifically, smokers who experienced quit episodes at treatment end reported lower levels of life stress during the year preceding treatment than nonquitters. Depression and anxiety, which had been shown to be predictors for smokers from medical populations, were not related to treatment outcome for the more heterogeneous sample in this experiment; therefore, high-risk smokers may differ in significant ways from smokers in general and these differences may interact with some aspects of psychological adjustment to the detriment of cessation attempts. As higher levels of life stress were not associated with greater amounts of negative emotions, the mechanism underlying the relationship between life instability and quitting remains undefined. The possibility that life stress interferes with cessation attempts via a distraction affect is proposed; also, selection of stress management strategies that are detrimental to quitting is suggested as a factor that underlies the relationship between higher levels of life changes and failure to quit.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Darwin Dale, "Relationships between status of psychological adjustment and learning new response patterns in behavioral treatment for smoking" (1989). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8918544.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8918544