Helping Those With Mental Illness Quit Smoking

This study tests whether pre-cessation interventions known to be effective in the general
population will increase acceptance of evidence-based treatment, engagement and compliance
with that treatment and initial quitting success. One hundred and seventy two patients will
be recruited from 13 Community Support Programs (CSPs). CSPs provide community based care to
those diagnosed with persistent and serious mental illness. All participants will receive
two group sessions (40 minutes each) modeled after "Kicking Butts", a group-based quitting
preparation program used for the past four years in two Milwaukee CSP programs run by
Wisconsin Community Services. Individuals will then be randomly assigned to the experimental
and control conditions (n=86 each). Experimental subjects will receive four evidence-based
preparatory interventions (motivational interviewing, smoking reduction, practice quit
attempt, and pre-quit use of nicotine replacement medication) (25 - 30 minutes each).
Attention control subjects will also receive four individual sessions of the same duration.
However their individual sessions' content will be a discussion of the personal relevance of
the group material and will not include any of the preparatory interventions. Data will be
collected via brief surveys taken pre-intervention, at the end of the last individual
session, and three months later and from a database provided by the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit
Line (WTQL).