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The aim of the study was to design and evaluate a stress control programme which can be carried out by employees in work organizations without direct assistance from specialists. The target group was Swedish high school teachers. Using a two-step model, so called health teams at six high schools were trained by a specialist. A health team is usually comprised of three to five voluntarily recruited persons, generally a school nurse and a few teachers. After this training, the health teams arranged voluntary circles with their colleagues at their respective schools. A treatment group of teachers (n = 56) followed the programme. Programme participants learned relaxation, discussed various aspects of stress, and were equipped with target group adapted training materials. The circles met five to eight times at 2–3 week intervals, 1–3 h per session; all sessions were held during the subjects' spare time. Compared with a control group of teachers (n = 33), the programme participants reported significantly different mean responses in the following respects at a post-training assessment: (i) fewer perceived stressors in the work situation; (ii) more use of emotion-focused coping strategies such as distancing, positive reappraisal, seeking social-emotional support, and self-control, (iii) improved health behaviour (drinking, exercise, nutrition, relaxation and smoking); (iv) fewer physical and emotional stress reactions; (v) a more cheerful overall mood state and a higher sense of well-being and work satisfaction; (vi) less work-related ill health; (vii) a lower intensity of reaction in response to daily hassles; and (viii) an increase in actions taken against stressors-individually and collectively-at work and in the private situation. It was suggested that routinization of stress control programmes in work organizations requires the following: the presence of goal-oriented and entrepreneurial intraorganizational change agents to lead the programmes, the presence of a specialist to train and supervise the local change agents, the availability of comprehensive and target group adapted (raining aids, and formal implementation of the programme in the organizational structure.
Larsson et al. (Mon,) studied this question.