Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most established approach to smoking cessation, but it isn’t the only one clinicians reach for. Some smokers respond better when CBT is paired with hypnosis or mindfulness, and hard-to-treat smokers with co-occurring psychiatric conditions often need an approach built around them specifically. The three books here cover that range.
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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Smoking Cessation: A Practical Guidebook to the Most Effective Strategies
Kenneth A. Perkins, Routledge, 2024
This second edition presents a structured CBT program for smoking cessation, built around three phases: building the smoker’s motivation and confidence, preparing for the quit date itself, and coping with the difficulties that surface afterward. It also includes a specifically tailored module addressing concerns about post-quit weight gain. Perkins treats this as central rather than an afterthought, since fear of weight gain is one of the more common reasons smokers give for not trying to quit or for relapsing. This edition also adds new case vignettes and provider scripts not in the original.
CBT is the most heavily studied psychological approach to smoking cessation, and this book reflects that research base directly rather than branching into newer modalities.
This works as a general CBT framework for smokes rather than a specialized one. It’s not built for those who’ve already failed standard treatment or who need something addressing psychiatric complexity.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness, and Hypnosis for Smoking Cessation: A Scientifically Informed Intervention
Joseph P. Green & Steven Jay Lynn, Wiley Blackwell, 2019
This book is built around Green and Lynn’s own program, which they call “The Winning Edge.” It’s a brief, two-session intervention refined over 30 years that combines CBT, mindfulness, acceptance, and hypnosis techniques rather than treating them as competing schools. The book is written as a step-by-step manual, with hypnosis scripts, participant handouts, and phone-call guidelines for follow-up sessions built in.
Both authors bring a research background that guards against overselling hypnosis specifically. Green is a past three-time president of the APA’s Society for Psychological Hypnosis, and Lynn’s research spans hypnosis alongside dissociation, memory, and the distinction between science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology. That combination matters here, since hypnosis-based treatments in general carry a reputation problem this book is careful not to reinforce.
This is the only book here with a fully manualized, ready-to-run program. Recommended for clinicians who want a structured protocol they can pick up and deliver as designed, rather than adapt from general principles.
Helping the Hard-core Smoker: A Clinician’s Guide
Edited by Daniel F. Seidman & Lirio S. Covey, Routledge, 1999
This edited volume moves through four parts: the biological and clinical basis of nicotine addiction, and research on smokers with co-occurring psychiatric disorders. From there it turns to specific populations such as adolescents, pregnant women, and older smokers, before closing with combined medical and psychological treatment approaches.
The “hard-core” framing in the title refers specifically to smokers who’ve already tried and failed standard cessation methods. This is often because of untreated depression, other substance use, or other complicating factors.
This is the book to reach for when a client has already tried standard cessation approaches without success, rather than as a first-line resource. It’s also the oldest of the three, so some of its pharmacological detail predates newer cessation medications.