Counselling for smoking cessation
With the most minimal intervention – provision of self-help materials for smoking cessation – the effect is only small. Telephone counselling is effective and can be used as well as, or instead of, face-to-face contact as an adjunct to self-help interventions.
Brief advice (less than 3 minutes) given by a general practitioner or nurse results in a small but significant increase in quit rates, of 2–3%. However there is a dose–response effect with person-to-person counselling in relation to the time taken in each session, as well as to the number of sessions. Group therapy seems to be as effective as individual counselling.