Motivational interviewing for smoking cessation

Nearly 20% of the world’s population smokes cigarettes, including approximately 800 million men and 200 million women [1]. In the USA, smoking prevalence among all adults aged ≥18 years has decreased 42.4% since 1965, but declines in current smoking prevalence have slowed during the past 5 years (declining from 20.9% in 2005 to 19.3% in 2010) [2]. Decreasing the prevalence of smoking will take a multitarget, multichannel and multimethod approach [3]. Although motivational principles could be used across all levels of social strata (from individual to healthcare systems to mass media approaches), this chapter focuses on motivating smoking cessation at the individual and group level, demonstrating how practitioners can motivate their patients to quit smoking.