A preliminary study on the application of Behavioral Activation in the treatment of smoking in women

: The present study evaluated the effectiveness of Behavioral Activation (BA) on women smokers with depression and anxiety symptoms who received multi-component treatment for smoking cessation. Forty-nine women were randomly assigned to two groups. 1) experimental: BA and varenicline and 2) control, cognitive behavioral therapy for smoking cessation and varenicline. Both treatments were applied in 10 twice-weekly. The Beck Depression Inventory II, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Fasgeström Test, Smokerlyzer® piCO monitor for carbon monoxide breath tests, and the Behavioral Activation Scale for Depression were used. Project-by-Project Analysis (PPA) was carried out with bivariate logistic regression, including only those who had completed the treatment and follow-ups. In the second, Intention-to-Treat Analysis (ITA) used the Kaplan-Meier non-parametric method and the Log Rank Test for all those initially randomized. The results showed that the abstinence rate with the BA treatment was higher than for the cognitive behavioral treatment for smoking cessation. Furthermore, BA loss was lower than with the standard treatment. We therefore conclude that BA + varenicline was effective from the end of the smoking cessation treatment to the six-month follow-up.