Prevalence of Smoking Among Different Personality Types

One of the leading causes of death in UK is smoking and cancer associated with smoking. The following report provides detailed structure that will be undertaken in order to generate a health promotion campaign designed to promote smoking cessation. The report starts will selection of the target group followed by the critical analysis of the governmental policies against smoking along with proposal for the best suited campaign to deal with smoking among target population.

According to British Association of Psychology (2014), personality is defined an individual differences in the pattern of thinking and behaviour. The habit of smoking is not limited to the personality types and is prevalent in type A, type B and type D. According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics (2016), 7.6 million of adult people in UK currently smoke (15.5%). Moreover, both introvert and extrovert people are found to be active smokers. However, the tendency of smoking is comparatively more pronounced among the type D individuals who are defined as distressed or disease-prone group of people (Saleem, Saleem and Waheed2016). The persons belonging to this group tend to be irritable, worried and always express great deal of negative emotions.  Moreover, type D people are linked to coronary heart disease thereby giving further evidence towards the tendency of smoking because according to the American Heart Association (2014), smoking increases the chance of coronary heart disease. Type D personality people suffers from the stress related illness and there lies a direct incidence of smoking with illness (McDermott et al.2013; Compare et al. 2013).

According to the Centre of Disease Control, cigarette smoking negatively impacts every organ of the body. Smoking increases the risk of development coronary heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer(Cooper and Marshall 2013). Smoking also increases the chance of developing asthmatic problem, both in active and passive smokers (Polosa and Thomson 2013). Apart from lunch cancer, smoking also increases the chance of the developing bladder cancer, blood cancer, cervical cancer, kidney and oesophagus cancer, liver/ pancreas/ stomach and pancreas cancer (Shiels et al. 2014). Smoking thus diminishes overall health status and wellbeing of the community, it also interferes the normal development of a child via causing preterm birth, still birth, ectopic pregnancy and low birth weight(Yang, Decker and Kramer 2013). 

The main target group of this health promotion campaign are people between the age group of 25 to 34 years. The reason behind this, this group of population is most likely to smoke (21%) and generally smoke in order to cope up with stress arising out of unemployment. Moreover, the tendency of smoking is also prevalent among the single adults who are routine or manual workers and have no formal qualifications. So overall lack of proper financial backup or lack of employment is generating stress and increases the urge of smoke. The selection is based on the UK statistics of smoking as published on 2016. The main factors which are influencing smoking are social demography, social-economic status and social environment.

Negative Impact of Smoking on Health

The main reason behind smoking is coping with stress. In biological or medical context, stress is regarded as mental, physical or emotional factor that causes mental tension. Stress can be both external and internal (Folkman2013). In case of stress associated with smoking, external factors are mainly significant like environment, psychological or social situations. Stress has a significant negative impact over the mental condition (Cooper and Marshall 2013). It generates racing thoughts, constant worried mental condition along with difficulty in concentrating and making decision. In order to side-pass this complex medical situation, people take help of smoking or other addiction like consumption of alcohol(Azagba and Sharaf2012). Cigarettes contain psychoactive or mood altering drug, nicotine. When a person smokes, within 8 seconds nicotine reaches brain and lead to the release of chemical messenger called dopamine. Dopamine causes a feeling of relaxation or pleasure however, during this perceived feeling of relaxation, the body passes through a stage of increased stress and this is manifested by high heart rate, high blood pressure and less oxygen availability in brain(Conrad et al., 2013). Thus, smoking is not a remedy for stress and it in turn increases stress resultingin severe depression and anxiety or other medical complications like irritable bowel syndrome and diabetes and obesity (Folkman2013).

Smokers find it hard to give up cigarette smoking as cravings for nicotine feel stressful because the body begins to go through the withdrawal symptoms. The smokers to want to give up smoking quit intake of tobacco altogether and this increases the rate of the withdrawal symptoms and nicotine withdrawal makes it even more difficult to quit(Dawkins et al. 2013). The withdrawal symptoms begin with 30 minutes of the last vaping of tobacco and some of the significant symptoms include: intense cravings for nicotine, sweating, tingling of hands and feet, nausea, headaches and intestinal cramping, coughing, sore throat, difficulty in concentrating, insomnia, anxiety, depression and irritability.  The withdrawal symptoms and this chronicity increases with tow o three days of nicotine vaping cessation(Dawkins et al. 2013).

Some take help of E-cigarette in order to cope up with nicotine addiction. According to the Action of Smoking and Health, Government of UK (2017), 2.9 million of adults in Great Britain vape E-cigarette and this figure has shown a steep increases of 700,000 from the data as reported in the year 2012. E-cigarettes are battery powered smoking devices, designed to look and feel like normal cigarette (Goniewicz, Lingas and Hajek2013). This battery powered devices has cartridge filled with liquid nicotine along with other flavours and chemicals. In E-cigarette, people inhales liquid in the form of vapour. It is claimed that E-cigarette do not burn tobacco and the people vaping cigarette do not inhale the same amount of carbon mono-oxide or tar as they do in case of regular cigarette. However, e-cigarette has its share of side-effects too. The nicotine present in E-cigarette causes stiffening of arteries along with the increase in heart rate and blood pressure. Moreover, such vaping for nicotine further increases the cravings towards smoke. The propylene glycol present in E-cigarette may lead to the development of persistent sore throat along with muscle pain in severe cases the allergic reaction trigger causing night sweat, body rash, diarrhoea (Hureaux, Drouet and Urban 2014). 

Target Group for the Health Promotion Campaign

The principal way to fight against tobacco smoking is coping up with stress. The best mechanism to cope up with stress is to work on the factors that trigger stress. As in this case, the main factors which trigger smoking among the selected group of population is lack of proper employment and financial crisis. After identification of the driving cause behind stress, coping mechanism needs to be undertaken like identification of the best time of day. For instance, if a person is smoking due to facing difficulty in concentration, then he or she must find suitable time in the day when his or her concentration level is maximum like wee hours in morning or late at time. While working on the favourable atmosphere, the person will gradually learn to concentrate and this will increase his or her confidence and helping them to concentrate irrespective of the time in day without taking help from cigarette. Other coping strategy include variation in activities in order to kill boredom and increase concentration, working less or taking less pressure in work, taking small or mini breaks.

Active smoking is associated with numerous unfavourable health conditions like increased risk for cardiac arrest and developing susceptibility towards cancer (with significant mention to lung cancer) (Flouris et al. 2010; Dinas, Koutedakis and Flouris, 2013). Based on the current studies, there will be an increase in the annual number of smoking related deaths globally and the number is supposed get increased to 8 million by 2030 (Carter et al. 2015;Dinas, Koutedakis and Flouris, 2013).Regular smoking of cigarette is also associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (Chang 2012). Second hand smoke or passive smoking also poses serious health threats. According to Hudson (2012), exposure to second hand smoke enhances the chance of developing lung cancer along with associated risks of cardiovascular diseases (Mozaffarian et al.2016).

UK’s department of health, 5 years tobacco control plan states that the government of UK will support the actions taken for comprehensive tobacco control in UK. This support will be based on six principal strands, stringently categorised by the World Bank (Gov.uk 2017). The six strands are:

1. Total ban in the advertisements that promote tobacco use or consumption
2. Increasing cost of price of the tobacco and making it less affordable
3. Regulatory control over the supply and demand of the products of tobacco
4. Assisting the chain smokers and other tobacco users to quit tobacco usage
5. Reduction in the rate of the passive smoking via banning smoking in public places
6. Effective communication towards control in tobacco use (Gov.uk 2017)

In spite of having effective policies over tobacco, the status of the optimal implementation of the policies varies across the World Health Organisation (WHO) European region. Beside there is heavy lobbying inside the tobacco industry who employs a number strategic techniques to conquer new customers and restrict actions in all levels. The consistency of this interference along with huge amount of resources made available by the tobacco companies is one of the prime reasons why international agreements and commitments for the control of tobacco are not always optimally enforced or implementation is delayed. Delay per month signifies huge financial gain for the tobacco industry and huge loss of health in societies(Mons et al. 2012). 

Coping Strategies to Reduce the Urge to Smoke

One of the important methods used by the government of UK to stop smoking is Stopober. This program helps adults across the country to make small changes in their lifestyle (cessation of smoking) in order to have huge positive impact on health in future.  Other strategies used for health promotion and smoking prevention include health-related warning (pictorial warnings) on the cigarette packages, bans on advertisements, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco companies.

Digital media is now accessible to every sector in UK. In UK, 81% of adults use internet and 72% of that population search health information in relation to smoking cessation(Lee et al. 2014). Hence, digital media like digital advertising (emails, web-pages, ads on social media, text messages and ads) can be used to encourage smoking cessation. It will help via increasing quit line call volume via direct promotion to smokers along with indirect promotion to smoker proxies. The documentation program of smoking cessation via using digital media will help in the development of knowledge base and best set of practices. In relation to population based smoking cessation interventions, innovative promotional strategies can be used like digital ads (Lee et al. 2014).

I think, the plan of usage of the digital media for smoking cessation will be successful because digital media channels are anonymous and are capable of handling a virtually unlimited volume of viewers. Moreover, it is easily accessible 24×7, able to tailor information based on user’s needs and has the potential to enhance he cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions(Lee et al. 2014). Each year media channels along with creative content will be evaluated before the launch of the campaigning activities and thereby increasing the rate of success of the program (Lee et al. 2014).

Digital media campaigns will also include kinesic and standing elements (non-verbal behaviour and facial expression or gestures) along with prosodic elements which will further help to attract the attention of the target audience. 

Such digital media campaigns will cast a positive impact on the young adults who are planning to quit smoking or are using cigarette in order to fight against the stress level. The digital campaign will also involve success stories so that via listening to same, they group of population suffering from depression and get positive mental backup and must fight against smoking cessation positively.

Conclusion

Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that, one of the major health threats among the young adults is smoking in order to fight stress. According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics (2016), 7.6 million of adult people in UK currently smoke (15.5%). Proper digital campaign targeted against the selected group of population will help in prevention of the smoking trends among the young adults. Moreover, strict governmental policies will further aid in escalating the success of the smoking cessation. 

Digital Media in Tobacco Control Efforts

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