Psych Central News
Online Stress Management Programs Found Effective
Policymakers and providers believe health information technology and web-based platforms can accomplish these goals. However, definitive proof of concept has been a work in progress.
Now, a new study shows that the use of an Internet-based stress management programs (ISM) can effectively reduce stress for a sustainable period.
As reported in the in Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Cleveland Clinic researchers discovered online stress management programs increase accessibility for individuals affected by chronic stress at a lesser cost than traditional methods.
Furthermore, the stress reduction achieved by an ISM is comparable to face-to-face stress management.
Researchers evaluated three-hundred study participants after completion of an eight-week ISM program.
Participants received online relaxation practice materials, strategies to help cope with life’s stressors, stress assessments at the beginning and end of the program, and daily topics to inspire participants to continue the meditation and relaxation techniques.
Upon comparison of program participants to individuals placed in a control group, ISM recipients showed a significant decrease in perceived stress from high levels to average, as well as greatly improved emotional wellbeing.
Results confirmed a positive correlation between the number of meditations completed per week and perceived stress reduction.
“Our recent findings provide individuals and employers with a new option to consider for themselves or their employees’ stress management,” said Michael Roizen, M.D., Chief Wellness Officer at Cleveland Clinic.
“Unmanaged stress causes some of the highest healthcare costs for employers and has a lasting impact on everyone; this study implies such health effect may be readily reduced.”
Using Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) to measure a person’s perception of stress, individual results were based on a 0 (best) to 40 scale.
Study participants’ stress levels prior to ISM averaged 23.05, much higher than the U.S. norm, 13.7 for females and 12.1 for males.
Active participants demonstrated a substantial stress score improvement of 4.04 after the program. Individuals who completed five meditations per week were likely to experience a 6.12 decrease in perceived stress scores vs. practicing once per week.
New research identifies chronic stress as a major public health issue and a factor associated with increased health risk and chronic disease.
Comparable to smoking, psychological distress is more significant in terms of health risks to blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes.
A national survey from the American Psychological Association (Stress in America) showed that 75 percent of American adults continue to report high levels of stress despite an improving economy, with little accessibility to a feasible stress management program.
And, for most Americans, work is the most stressful life factor.
ISM focuses heavily on achieving a state of mindfulness through relaxation and meditation, and guided imagery wheras face-to-face stress management programs often include massage therapy, exercise, diet modification, acupuncture, and meditation.
Researchers used standard outcome measures including the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, and the Adult Self-Transcendence Inventory, to compare the two approaches throughout the 12-week study.
The General Electric Corporation (GE) offered the ISM program to employees in three of its sites as part of the trial.
“Understanding consumer behavior related to health and healthcare is critical to advancing care delivery,” said Mitch Higashi, chief economist for GE Healthcare.
“In this case, demonstrating how workplace stress management programs could be delivered effectively in online formats provides important insights for future innovation.”
Source: Cleveland Clinic
On Some Days, Best Not to Make Marital Sacrifices
Life and work are demanding and while people often make daily sacrifices in the name of love, is it ever okay to miss a day of emptying the dishwasher so that you can have some time to yourself for self-care? And, when both parties have long and stressful days, what is the expectation and what is the correct plan of action?
A new study from the University of Arizona suggests that while making sacrifices in a romantic relationship is generally a positive thing, doing so on days when you are feeling especially stressed may not be beneficial.
The study, led by Casey Totenhagen, Ph.D., will be featured in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
Researchers followed 164 couples, married and unmarried, whose relationships ranged in length from six months to 44 years.
Each of the 328 individuals was asked to fill out daily online surveys, over the course of seven days, indicating the daily sacrifices they made for their partner in 12 categories, such as child care, household tasks and amount of time spent with friends, among others.
They also were asked to report on the number of hassles they experienced that day and how much those hassles affected them.
The participants then ranked, on a scale of one to seven, how committed they felt to their partners, how close they felt to their partners and how satisfied they felt with their relationship that day.
In the study “sacrifice” was defined as a small change in daily routine in order to do something nice for a partner and maintain the quality of the relationship.
Investigators found that individuals who made sacrifices for their significant others generally reported feeling more committed to their partners when they performed those nice behaviors.
However, when they made sacrifices on days when they had experienced a lot of hassles, they did not feel more committed.
“On days when people were really stressed, when they were really hassled, those sacrifices weren’t really beneficial anymore, because it was just one more thing on the plate at that point,” Totenhagen said.
“If you’ve already had a really stressful day, and then you come home and you’re sacrificing for your partner, it’s just one more thing.”
“You need to be mindful of the resources that you have to do those sacrifices at the end of the day,” she added. “Maybe trying to pile on more sacrifices at the end of a really stressful day isn’t the best time.”
Surprisingly, individuals on the receiving end of a partner’s sacrifice did not report feeling more committed to their partner — perhaps because they were unaware that their partner had done anything special for them.
Researchers say this lack of awareness is a phenomenon that deserves additional research and attention.
Ironically, when it came to feelings of relationship satisfaction and closeness, making sacrifices for one’s partner seemed to have little bearing one way or another.
However, the daily hassles reported by an individual did affect closeness and satisfaction for both partners, regardless of which one experienced those hassles.
“We found that sacrifices did not significantly predict satisfaction and closeness, but we found that hassles played a pretty big role for those two outcomes,” Totenhagen said.
Researchers also discovered excess stress and hassle at work affected both individuals.
Those findings, Totenhagen said, support existing research suggesting people don’t typically do very well at compartmentalizing different aspects of their lives – like work and personal lives – which often results in a “spillover” effect.
“If I have a terrible day at work, I’m going to come home feeling grumpy, and probably my quality of interaction with my partner won’t be as great,” she said.
“And if my partner has a stressful day, they’re probably coming home feeling grumpy and they won’t have the energy to have positive interactions, so I still suffer from my partner’s stressful day.”
The implication, said Totenhagen, is that couples would do best to work through those daily hassles together.
“It’s really important that couples work on coping with those daily stressors as they occur, before they have a chance to build up,” she said.
“Even if I had stressful experiences that didn’t involve my partner, it can still impact my partner, so it might be beneficial for us to work on those together.”
Totenhagen’s research on romantic relationships aims to identify precipitating factors that can make a relationship good or bad.
“I want to understand what makes good relationships good and bad relationships bad, and I think that a lot of that comes in our daily interactions with our partners and how our daily lives seep into our relationships,” she said.
“I think it’s really useful, then, to try and understand not just the big things that happen in relationships but the things we can do every day to foster positivity with our partners through our everyday interactions.”
Source: University of Arizona
Man washing dishes photo by shutterstock.
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