You are a health psychologist working in a smoking cessation Essay

You are a health psychologist working in a smoking cessation programme. You are asked to design a research project to promote non-smoking in a group of smokers - Essay Example ished by the National Statistics Online (UK, 2008) it is revealed that ‘in 2006, 68 per cent of smokers who were asked said they wanted to give up; nine in ten mentioned at least one health related reason for doing so’. In accordance with the above, the expansion of smoking as a common daily activity for millions of people cannot be doubted. In fact, smoking has been closely related with all aspects of daily life. For this reason, in the above survey it has been found that ‘in 2006, 59 per cent of smokers felt that it would be difficult to go without smoking for a whole day’ (National Statistics Online, UK, 2008). Although the above statistics refer to Britain, it has to be noticed that smoking is not related with a particular country. In a similar survey conducted in USA it was revealed that in the specific country ‘an estimated  25.9 million men (23.9 percent) and  20.7 million women (18.1 percent) are smokers’ (National Health Interview S urvey (NHIS),  2005, National Center for Health Statistics, in American Health Association, 2008). It is clear from the above statistics that smoking is a severe problem the expansion of which cannot be easily controlled. The specific problem has a series of consequences that are not limited to the damages of health but they can also take the form of the financial damage the person involved (cost of cigarettes – cost of treatment for diseases developed because of smoking). For the countries around the world, smoking has been proved to be a severe problem leading to a continuous increase of the cases handled by the hospitals and other medical treatment providers internationally. As an example, for England the cost of medical treatment provided to smokers has been proved to be extremely high. In a relevant survey it has been found that ‘in England, 364,000 patients are admitted to NHS hospitals each year due to diseases caused by smoking; this translates into 7,000 hosp ital admissions per week, or 1,000 day; for