Viva sem tabaco - características dos usuários de uma intervenção mediada por internet para fumantes

Abstract

Tobacco cessation Internet interventions are one of the complementary approaches to treat smoking. However, little is known about the characteristics of the users of these interventions and whether depression is prevalent among these users. This thesis describes two studies. Study 1. Objective: to describe characteristics of smokers who used an opensource Internet smoking intervention available in seven languages. Methods: Cross-sectional study. Data was collected between 03/02/2014 and 03/30/2017 through Google Analytics (GA) and intervention users were included in the sample only if they were smokers 18 years or older and agreed to participate in the study (n = 1,530). Results: according to the GA data, the intervention received 25.970 visits from 113 countries. Among the intervention users, the mean age of registered participants was 43.2 (SD = 11.3) years old; 65.7% were women and 50.7% presented high level of dependence according to the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence. The most common language chosen by participants was Portuguese (99.4%). The median time of the registered users’ visit was 7.6 minutes and the median number of pages seen was 12 (IQR= 15). Study 2. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of depression among users of the Viva sem Tabaco - a web-based intervention for smoking cessation. Methods: this was a retrospective cross-sectional study. 1433 participants were invited to participate in the Internet-based intervention. Inclusion criteria were: being 18 years or older and a smoker; exclusion criteria were: did not fill two questions of the screening depression questionnaire PHQ-2 and had made multiple accesses within a limited time span, characterizing invalid access. At the end, the sample had 461 participants. Participants answered questions related to sociodemographic characteristics, tobacco history, depression (PHQ-2 and PHQ-9), alcohol use and intervention use. Results: Participants average age was 42.3 years (SD = 12.1). Most participants were female (67%), and seventy per cent were employed during the time of the study. From the total sample, 36.4% of the participants presented depression according to PHQ-2. Being screened with depression was associated with tobacco dependence (OR = 1.10; CI95% = 1.00 - 1.20) and associated with not having a job (OR = 0.53; CI95% = 0.29 - 0.97). Conclusions: Smokers that used the Internet intervention are similar to the smokers that seek traditional smoking cessation treatment in most of the evaluated characteristics; however, they are younger, had higher levels of education, used the Internet intervention as the first cessation attempt and had higher risk of being depressed. Taking into account the increased access to Internet and the technological changes, online interventions may be promising to offer treatment to different types of smokers, especially those screened as depressed.