Classroom stress lessons lacked emphasis?

Stress is the reason most often given in the UK for taking time off work. The damaging effects are making themselves felt at an ever younger age, to the extent that classroom-based stress prevention programs are beginning to emerge. 

For example, a stress management curriculum for children between the ages of nine and 11 has lately been trialed in Holland. Early results indicated reduced symptoms of stress and anxiety, and increased use of emotion-focused coping strategies.

The benefits seem to have been predominantly short term, however. Two years later, all that distinguished the children who took part was their greater awareness of stress. 

The research team led by Gerda Kragg, a psychologist from Maastricht University, carried out a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the eight week intervention Learn Young, Learn Fair in over 50 schools in the Limburg province of the Netherlands. 

Half were randomly selected to receive the program; the remainder carried on as usual. The researchers compared the changes in stress levels and coping skills in both groups of children, using a standardized questionnaire before, just after children attended the program and two years later. 

The 1,500 mainly Catholic children participating in Learn Young, Learn Fair attended one-hour classes where their teachers helped them to develop new coping skills and set homework exercises. They were also offered daily reinforcing activities and a sequence of booster sessions. 

Implementation of the basic components of the intervention was impressive with over 90% of classes being delivered as designed. However, the booster sessions and daily activities often fell by the wayside; fewer than two thirds of the schools used them. 

Given the high levels of stress routinely experienced by young people, the researchers say, help with stress management should be universally available. Those on the verge of their teens are particularly vulnerable, having to deal with the pressures associated with puberty, at the same time as making the transition to secondary school. 

Gerda Kragg’s team go on to point out that as well as being a problem in its own right, stress is related to eczema, insomnia and abdominal pain, as well as to behavior problems and depression. Teaching adequate coping skills has been shown to alleviate the damaging effects. 

Learn Young, Learn Fair sets out to teach children three types of coping strategies: emotion-focused skills to help children express and manage their feelings; problem-focused strategies help them deal with the causes. The team also looked at how children drew on support from friends and family. 

The program was particularly effective at promoting emotion-focused coping techniques. Children who took part used them significantly more often after finishing the program. This did not translate into a long-term change, but the young people commented that they were very helpful and thought more time should have been spent on them.

However, an unintended consequence of Learn Young, Learn Fair was that, in the short-term, children used problem-solving significantly less often – presumably more content to cope with the experience rather than to tackle the cause. 

The fact that the only long-term effect was to increase children’s awareness of stress prompts the authors to suggest that it may be the first step in the change process. A more intensive intervention would be needed to achieve change in coping strategies permanently, they say. 

See: Kraag G, van Breukelen G, Kok G and Hosman C (2009), “Learn Young, Learn Fair, a stress management program for fifth and sixth graders: longitudinal results from an experimental study,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50, 9, pp 1185-1195.