Psychological and physiological response of students to different types of stress management programs.

Purpose: To design, implement, and examine the psychoneuroendocrine responses of three different types of stress management programs.

Design: Randomly assigned. A pre/post experimental design comparing variables between three different programs and a control group. The first program included training in deep breathing, relaxation response, meditation, and guided imagery techniques (RRGI). The second program included training in cognitive behavioral techniques (CB). The third program included both RRGI and CB (RRGICB).

Setting: The study was conducted at Buenos Aires University.

Subjects: Participants (N  = 52) were undergraduate students.

Measures: Anxiety, anger, hopelessness, neuroticism, respiration rate, and salivary cortisol levels were assessed.

Analysis: Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to investigate differences in pre and post variables.

Results: Subjects in the RRGI group showed significantly lower levels of anxiety (p < .011), anger (p < .012), neuroticism (p < .01), respiratory rate (p < .002), hopelessness (p < .01), and salivary cortisol (p < .002) after the treatment. Subjects in the CB group showed significantly lower levels of anxiety (p < .018), anger (p < .037), and neuroticism (p < .03) after the treatment. Subjects in the RRGICB group showed significantly lower levels of anxiety (p < .001), anger (p < .001), neuroticism (p < .008), hopelessness (p < .01), respiratory rate (p < .001), and salivary cortisol (p < .002) after the treatment. Subjects in the control group showed only one variable modification, a significant increase in cortisol levels (p < .004).

Conclusions: The combination of deep breathing, relaxation response, meditation, and guided imagery techniques with CB seems to be effective at helping people to deal with stress.