Women Engaging in Quitting Smoking Together (WE QUIT)

Distress Tolerance Treatment for Weight Concern in Smoking Cessation Among Women

The long-term goal of this program of research is to develop and disseminate an efficacious intervention for weight concern that will significantly increase smoking cessation rates among women. The overall objective of this project is to develop this intervention and modify it based on piloting and feedback to ensure its feasibility and acceptability. These objectives will be accomplished by pursuing the following specific aim: 1) develop a group-based distress tolerance treatment for weight concern (DT-W) in female smokers and a comparison health education (HE) program and pilot both treatments with three groups of 10 (total N = 30) female weight-concerned smokers (2 DT-W groups, 1 HE group).

Inclusion Criteria:

• female
• 18 to 65 years of age
• smoke 10 or more cigarettes per day
• daily smoker for at least the past year
• report motivation to quit smoking in the next month of at least 5 on a 10 point scale
• report concern of at least 50 on at least one of two 100 point scales assessing weight concern
• able to travel to study location for study appointments

Exclusion Criteria:

• current use of other smoking cessation or weight loss therapies
• current use of other tobacco products at least weekly
• current diagnosis of depression
• diagnosis or treatment for non-nicotine substance use disorder with substance use during the past 6 months
• lifetime diagnosis or treatment of eating disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or schizoaffective disorder
• current use of psychotropic medication except antidepressants
• score above established cut-offs on self-report screening measures of depressive symptomology, eating disorder symptomology, alcohol use disorder, or drug use disorder
• current suicidality or homicidality
• medical condition that is a contraindication for the use of transdermal nicotine patch
• lives at same address as current or past participant