Testing the Effectiveness of a Short-Term Stress Prevention Programme in Primary School Students. (13th July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Englert, Chris; Bechler, Aline; Singh, Sarah; Bertrams, Alex
• Is Part Of: Health psychology bulletin. Volume 2(2018)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 9
• Publication Date: 2018-07-13
• Subjects: prevention -- school -- self-control -- self-efficacy -- stress
• DOI: 10.5334/hpb.11
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2398-5941

Abstract

The present study tested the effectiveness of a four-week, school-based, universal cognitive-behavioural stress prevention programme. The prevention programme included short daily exercises which were adopted from two well-validated anti stress trainings. The daily exercises took approximately 10–15 minutes on average and were performed during regular classroom sessions. Half of the classes were randomly assigned to the prevention group ( n = 80), while the other half were sorted into the non-treatment control group, which did not take part in the stress prevention programme ( n = 73). The students' physical and psychological stress-related symptoms were assessed five times (i.e., prior to the training and after each week of training). Their coping strategies, self-efficacy and self-control were also measured. It was hypothesized that in the prevention group students' physical and psychological stress-related symptoms would significantly decrease over time, compared to the non-treatment control group. Contrary to our predictions, the prevention programme did not lead to statistically significant changes in physical or psychological stress-related symptoms. The students' coping strategies, self-efficacy and self-control did not have an influence on the result patterns. The results indicate that short-term stress prevention programmes may not be as effective as long-term programmes.