Smoking cessation in people with severe mental illness.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Identifying and exploring positively deviant staff members, to explore exceptional smoking cessation practice for people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI).
IRAS ID
340934
Contact name
Megan Smith
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
n/a, n/a
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 30 days
Research summary
The tobacco epidemic is one of the current biggest public health threats, killing over 8 million people a year. However, the prevalence of cigarette smoking in people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) is higher than the general population. Notably, 30% - 70% of individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar conditions smoke, compared with 14.1% of the general population. Moreover, people with SMI smoke more, leading to higher nicotine dependence. Alongside this, smoking cessation rates are also lower, yet evidence suggests that when people with SMI are offered appropriate support, they are equally likely to want to quit smoking, highlighting the necessity to identify appropriate smoking cessation methods for people with SMI.
To identify ‘best practice’ for smoking cessation in people with SMI, the positive deviance approach will be used. This is a ‘bottom up’ approach, based on the notion of identifying individuals, communities or services who demonstrate exceptionally good performance on particular measures, despite being exposed to the same constraints and challenges as others.
This will be conducted in inpatient mental health settings, in line with current government priorities (NHS Long Term Plan). This will comprise of two qualitative studies. Firstly, an interview study with key stakeholders within tobacco control, to identify high performing smoking cessation staff members. The second qualitative study will comprise of a further interview study with the identified staff members. Here, the aim is to identify the positively deviant practices/behaviours that these staff demonstrate.
Additionally,surveys will be distributed to service users who have or are due to be discharged from inpatient mental health care, to explore their experience of smoking cessation within this setting. Service users will be given the opportunity to discuss their experiences further in a semi-structured interview with a researcher. From this, a ‘gold standard’ of best practice for smoking cessation within people with SMI will be produced.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 3
REC reference
24/WS/0111
Date of REC Opinion
27 Sep 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion