; rel=shortlink Vary: Accept-Encoding Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Peer counseling with the Youth Quitline
Smoking is a complex social behavior. Different people take up their first cigarette for different reason, thus they call for different approaches to smoking cessation.
Take teenage smoking as an example.
Teenage smoking is a worrying phenomenon. Citing the latest (2010) data from the Thematic Household Survey of the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 68.2% of daily smokers have in fact begun smoking before the age of 20. Since the prevalence of teenage smoking serves as an important indicator and determining factor of the future smoking population in society, it was therefore believed that to effectively curb smoking behavior in society, one has to start with the teenagers.
In Hong Kong, the Youth Quitline, is a pioneering initiative of its kind, delivering telephone counseling services specifically catered to the needs of teenagers aged 12 to 25, smokers and non-smokers alike.
As targets of the hotline are local teenagers in the city, the Quitline recruits students from the School of Medicine, School of Nursing and the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Hong Kong as peer counselors to help run the service.
To become qualified counselors, these students are required to take courses relating to smoking, cessation services, counseling and psychology to broaden their understanding into the issue of teenage smoking and to learn the basics of counseling. The assessment of the course comes in two forms, pen-and-paper exam as well as practical examinations that require face-to-face counseling exercise. Students who expressed their interest in becoming counselors and have passed the exams are then qualified.
Matthew Ho, a third year student from the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Hong Kong, said he became a counselor to learn more about the stories of teenage smokers.
It is commonly believed that smoking behavior is caused by peer pressure, family reasons and an individual's need to find a channel to vent emotions and alleviate stress.
Based on his experiences as a counselor, Matthew points out that sometimes teenagers smoke because they do not have a positive attitude towards life.
"We grew up in a healthy environment but not everyone is equally fortunate," said Matthew, "some teenagers do not view life positively and thus may easily commit to less desirable behavior such as smoking. It's a pity. My job, as a counselor, is therefore to understand their thoughts and behavior, to learn their attitude towards life and hopefully, to help them stay out of smoking. We have to find ways to change their patterns of cognitive thinking."
Counseling service with the Quitline is client-centered, tailored to the needs of each teenager. While there are no protocols guiding the counseling process, counselors in general conduct their work on the principle of 5As - ask, advice, assess, assist and arrange.
Upon the teenagers' first call to the Quitline, it marks the beginning of a two-year service with the hotline. Three days after the first call, counselors would call the teenagers for follow up and usually six sessions of telephone counseling would at least be conducted in the first month to enhance the effectiveness of the counseling - a technique proven by empirical studies.
The Quitline is reliant on self-reports. Therefore, once the teenager reports to the counselor that him or her did not smoke for seven consecutive days, the cessation would be regarded as successful. Based on the latest statistics, 24% of teenagers quit smoking upon six months of follow up and regular counseling.
At present, there are several approaches through which teenagers may reach the Quitline.
So far, the Quitline has sent out its promotional materials and brochures to schools for General Education classes and in-school promotion. If the School finds a need for counseling services to its students, it may directly refer these cases to the hotline upon the consent of the teenagers.
Meanwhile, the Quitline has published its own brochures and created a webpage to promote the hotline. Yet more work has to be done.
Celeste Tang, a year two student from the Master of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong and a counselor with the Quitline, said the biggest challenge faced by the Quitline is its lack of publicity.
As highlighted by Anita Chau, the coordinator of the Quitline, the hotline runs on limited resources and funding. As the production of promotional materials are often expensive, it becomes difficult for them to promote the Quitline.
"Teenagers are more appealed to multimedia materials, graphics and creative presentation," said Celeste, "what we need to do now is to develop multimedia promotional materials that helps to bridge our gap with them."
The Quitline is a collaboration between the Departments of Nursing Studies, Community Medicine and Social Work and Social Administration of the University of Hong Kong with the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health. With the support from the Department of Health, it is now part of the Integrated Smoking Cessation Hotline of the Department of Health.
About Jasmine Siu
No Comments
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Name *
Email *
You may use these HTML tags and attributes: &lt;a href="" title=""&gt; &lt;abbr title=""&gt; &lt;acronym title=""&gt; &lt;b&gt; &lt;blockquote cite=""&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;del datetime=""&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;i&gt; &lt;q cite=""&gt; &lt;strike&gt; &lt;strong&gt;