Smokers have an even tougher time quitting than researchers had thought, according to psychology professor David Gilbert. 

He and his team recently studied brain wave patterns of 96 women who were randomly assigned to a group required to abstain from smoking for 31 days or to a control group that continued to smoke. Those who quit did so cold-turkey but had assistance from Gilbert’s team.

"The quit-smoking group felt more tension and was more depressed, and surprisingly, they stayed that way for the full 31 days," Gilbert says. 

This finding "helps us understand more about why people relapse," he says. "It's making a lot of people in the field rethink how long it takes people to recover and may suggest other interventions."

A report on the study appeared earlier this year in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Since 1976 Gilbert has studied personality and other individual differences as they relate to smoking and quitting smoking. Monitoring participants’ brain waves helps reveal, among other things, how nicotine affects concentration and emotional reactions to positive and negative images. 

Gilbert is now doing brain wave testing for 45 days after subjects quit smoking, and plans to test over a longer period of time if necessary to get a more accurate fix on recovery from nicotine withdrawal. That will give smokers a better understanding of what to expect when they quit.

Gilbert’s Smoking Research Lab, established in 1985, also is currently studying the effectiveness of nicotine patch treatment in quitting smoking.

His team is "trying to figure out who the nicotine patch helps and why, how it pertains to people’s moods and concentration," he says.

"We know the patch isn’t a magic bullet, that it doesn’t help everyone."
 

Fall 2002 Contents | Perspectives Home | SIUC Home

Comments: Perspectives Webmaster
Copyright © 2002, Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University | Privacy Policy