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Objective: World Health Organization defines smoking as the leading preventable cause of diseases. In this study, socio-demographic characteristics of patients admitted to smoking cessation clinic, causes of initiation of smoking, reasons that increase the request for smoking, the reasons for eagerness to quit smoking and difficulties in this process were investigated.
Method: Sociodemographic data form and a questionnaire were filled in by patients. Of the 159 patients included in the study, 31.4% were female and 68.6% were male. 75.8% of the patients were married and 24.2% were single.
Results: The most common reason for starting to smoking was defined as emulation (56%), followed by curiosity (34.6%), stress (22%), sadness (12.6%), environmental pressure (11.9%), reaction to prohibitions (9.4%) and self-proving (6.3%). The most common reasons for smoking cessation were fear of future illness (72.3%). Other reasons include feeling of giving damage to environment (32.1%), economic reasons (29.6%), current illness (24.5%), bad smell (22.6%), doctor’s recommendation (16.4%), to be a good example to the environment (13.2%), social pressure (13.2%), being ashamed (6.3%) and personal beliefs (3.8%). The most common causes that increases patients’ desire to smoke were request after meal (72.3%), stress (53.5%), tea (50.3%), coffee (32.1%) and alcohol (17%). 78.3% of the cases had tried to quit previously. Most common difficulties for cessation were extreme desire for smoking (62.3%), irritability (51.6%) and impaired concentration (29.6%).
Conclusion: Reasons for initiation of smoking was similar to other studies. However, the reasons for requesting to quit smoking have shown some variances with higher rates of economic reasons harming the environment.