Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Tobacco Cessation Among Psychiatric Partial Hospital Patients

Overview

People with serious mental illness are three times more likely to smoke cigarettes than people without mental illness. People with mental illness are less likely to be successful in quitting smoking than those without mental illness. Therefore, the healthcare community needs to find ways to get people with mental illness treatment to help them stop smoking. This study explores whether a treatment, called acceptance and commitment therapy, which is an affective therapy for serious mental illness, can help patients with serious mental illness stop smoking. In particular, the investigators test whether patients will be interested in receiving acceptance and commitment therapy for smoking cessation in a psychiatric partial hospital (also known as a day treatment program), whether they are able to complete the treatment, and whether it will help them stop smoking compared to usual care. To test these research questions, 40 patients in the Rhode Island Hospital's psychiatric partial hospital will be recruited. Half of the patients will receive acceptance and commitment therapy to help them stop smoking (2 in person sessions, 5 telephone sessions) and half will receive usual care (2 in person sessions, electronic referral to the Rhode Island tobacco quit line). All participants will be offered the nicotine patch. All participants will complete a baseline survey and a follow-up visit at the end of treatment to measure whether they stopped smoking and whether they liked the treatment. The study will also measure how many participants completed the treatment sessions. If successful, this treatment model could be a way to get more patients with mental illness into treatment.

BACKGROUND: There is a significant disparity in tobacco use in that smokers with mental illness smoke at twice the rate of the general population, use more tobacco per day and are disproportionately affected by smoking-related disease. Few models exist for treating tobacco use in individuals with mental illness. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a treatment strategy that helps individuals accept discomfort while making value-guided change. It has been used successfully to treat psychiatric symptoms in people with serious mental illness (SMI) and is well-suited to treat smoking in people with SMI. Psychiatric partial hospitalization programs provide an opportunity to intervene on tobacco use in people with SMI. OBJECTIVE: This study tests the feasibility of offering an ACT-based smoking cessation treatment initiated in a psychiatric partial hospital program and continuing post-discharge. AIMS: The study has 3 aims: (1) To assess the feasibility, acceptability, and safety of an ACT-based, partial hospital initiated, counseling intervention for smoking cessation. (2) To collect preliminary evidence of the efficacy (i.e., effect size estimates) of ACT-based counseling initiated in the partial hospital compared to usual care. (3) To explore of the effect of treatment condition (ACT vs. Usual Care) on ACT treatment targets. DESIGN: This study is a randomized design (n=40), where patients in an ACT-based psychiatric partial hospital will be offered up to 8 weeks of the nicotine patch and randomly assigned to either ACT care (n=20; two in-person ACT-based counseling sessions + 5 ACT-based telephone counseling sessions) or to Enhanced Usual Care (n=20; two in person medication management counseling sessions + referral to the state quit line). Outcomes assessed at end of treatment include: feasibility (percent of eligible patients who enroll, percent of patients completing treatment), acceptability (patient satisfaction ratings), safety (hospital readmissions, symptom exacerbation), efficacy (CO confirmed 7 day point prevalence abstinence at end of treatment) and ACT treatment targets (tolerance of discomfort, mindfulness and acceptance). SIGNIFICANCE: This study tests a treatment model for smokers with SMI, a group with particularly refractory smoking behavior. If successful, this model could be implemented broadly in psychiatric day treatment programs.