Smoking cessation interventions involving significant others: the role of social support

It is well established that the social environment influences smoking initiation, maintenance as well as cessation. This effect, in particular on stopping smoking, is likely to be partly mediated by social support that is provided to smokers by significant others. Indeed, observational studies investigating the natural progression towards smoking cessation show that social support is clearly associated with abstinence – positive social support generally increasing the likelihood of successfully stopping smoking and negative social support undermining it. Positive social support is thought to motivate those attempting to quit, model desired behaviour and act as a stress buffer thus improving chances of quitting successfully. Whilst intra-treatment social support, the support provided by clinicians and other participants within intensive behavioural treatment, constitutes an essential and effective part of smoking cessation interventions, interventions with extra-treatment social support components aimed at enhancing the social support from significant others have yielded surprisingly equivocal results. This may be due to a number of practical as well as theoretical limitations associated with improving social support provided by others. Given this lack of evidence of effectiveness, current smoking cessation guidelines do not explicitly advocate the use of extra-treatment social support in smoking cessation interventions.