Testing the Effectiveness of a Short-Term Stress Prevention Programme in Primary School Students

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.