A espiritualidade no aconselhamento de apoio às pessoas que desejam parar de fumar

Abstract

This research calls on Practical Theology, Pastoral Counseling and Spirituality to give attention to Smoking Cessation since tobacco has become the greatest isolated cause of precocious avoidable deaths, a pandemic with an estimated five (5) million deaths a year in the world and two hundred (200) thousand in Brazil. It defines possible elements of approximation in the care of smokers within community environments. The first chapter deals with the historical aspects of the evolution of smoking; the industrialization of cigarettes and derivatives; the discoveries of the harmful effects of the use of tobacco, alerting to the issue of integral public health and the concrete experience which gave origin to this paper. The second chapter presents smoking as dependence highlighting that the tobacco, of all the known drugs, is the one which provokes the greatest bio-psycho-chemical dependence. The chapter presents some elements of the traditional treatment of smokers; it registers some of the more relevant public campaigns and most important world, national and state movements in the struggle for smoking cessation. The third chapter suggests that Practical Theology through Counseling and Pastoral Care should occupy itself with the themes which involve the prevention of the initiation of new smokers, the treatment, the control through laws which promote public and private smoke free environments and the protection of non-smokers, proposing strategies which can contribute to the cessation of smoking based on Judeo-Christian ethical reservations. The fourth chapter highlights practical aspects where spirituality can act as a protection factor in the cessation of smoking, and in a special way through counseling support, help people who wish to stop smoking. Considering that many have tried everything they knew of to stop smoking , but a large part has not tried through cultivating spirituality, and that in Brazil of the 27 million smokers (20% of the population), 22 million wish to stop smoking (80% of the smokers), and that life exists after the cigarette , the importance of spirituality is highlighted as a synthesizing link and the core of the wholeness of life which is capable of broadly supporting and sustaining the decisions of the people who wish to stop smoking.