Conditions: Smoking Cessation Schizophrenia
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 42
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
The study investigators will enroll 45 treatment seeking, cigarette smokers with a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) diagnosis of schizophrenia who will be randomly assigned into three arms of treatment for smoking cessation treatment, receiving either 1. Control: "standard therapy" (n=15), including stepwise monotherapy of nicotine patch or bupropion sustained release, 2. Extended treatment with combination bupropion, nicotine patch, and nicotine lozenge for 6 months (n=15), or 3. Extended treatment with combination bupropion, nicotine patch, and nicotine lozenge for 6 months with home visits (n=15) and phone calls to the home or living facility. During all treatments, participants will receive weekly smoking cessation group counseling, as is standard for smoking cessation treatment. At the time of enrollment, participants will complete a one-study visit lead-in to complete baseline assessments, psychological and medical evaluation, and comprehensive assessment of drug use to determine study eligibility. Once determined to be eligible for the trial, participants will be randomly assigned to one of the treatment arms using a randomization procedure. The "standard therapy" treatment arm, or control group, will receive either nicotine patch taper starting at 21 milligrams (mg) daily, nicotine lozenge as needed, and/or bupropion sustained release at 150mg daily for 3 days, then 150 mg twice a day for a total of 12 weeks. The extended therapy arm will start the nicotine patch at 21mg daily with as needed nicotine lozenge for breakthrough cravings and initiation of bupropion sustained release at 150mg daily for 3 days a week prior to starting nicotine replacement, then 150 mg twice daily for 6 months (as tolerated). The third arm will be identical to the second arm except for the added home visit intervention.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Treatment as usual starting with one smoking cessation medication plus group therapy. arm 2: Extended treatment with multiple standard medications plus group therapy. arm 3: Extended treatment with multiple standard medications plus group therapy plus home visits.

Interventions: intervention 1: Combination Bupropion + NRTs intervention 2: Extended Treatment intervention 3: Home Visits & Calls intervention 4: Monotherapy
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None intervention 3: None intervention 4: None

Protocol document: