Programs for Preventing Stress
You are content writer. You have to add headings with html tags or for any of paragraphs in original text. Programs for preventing stress are interventions approaches created to give workers the ability to tailor how they perceive stressful situations and deal with distress symptoms more skillfully. To help prevent and manage stress at various levels of the team, diverse organizations frequently implement a variety of programs. The large range of stress prevention and management strategies depends not only on the target audiences but also on their goals and organizational design. In order to create stress management and safety programs that live up to expectations, organizations need first assess their unique needs. The organization's policies must include the development of plans that thoroughly address concerns relating to health and safety in order to maintain and establish the well-being and good health health and safety. The strategies must comprise plans to effectively prevent and manage stress and support the needs of individuals as well as the organization. Additionally, the organization should continually evaluate and review the strategies.
Studies on Effective Stress-Management Techniques
Studies indicate that effective stress-management techniques that employees of an organization can depend on to minimize distress produce expected health outcomes. Arrays of stress-management techniques with important health outcomes that support employees and help minimize distress include self-management training and stress reduction measures such as muscles relaxation and meditation as well as cognitive-behavioral social skills. Consequently, the combinations of two or more of these stress management techniques are essential in minimizing distress among employees within an organization. Research provides that most organizations that commonly used the combinations of muscle relaxation and meditation, as well as cognitive-behavior social skills, recorded immense positive health outcomes. The organization should, therefore, conduct training programs that entail the acquisition of cognitive-behavioral social skills, meditation, and muscle relaxation techniques to foster self-management training as well as stress reduction (Giga, Cooper& Faragher, 2003).
Cognitive-Behavioral Social Skills Training
Granholm et al. (2005) argue that people who suffer from mental disorders always have detrimental deficits in practicing behavioral coping skills. Improving social and behavioral as well as vocational functioning has become a vital objective of treatment for organizational employees with severe mental illness. Cognitive-behavioral, social skills training facilitates massive functional improvements in the organization. The cognitive-behavioral, social skills training involves cognitive behavioral therapy and social skills techniques like thought challenging, communication skills, decision making, and problem-solving skills.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is essential for achieving treatment outcomes for a variety of psychiatric disorders. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is effective in the treatment of adult depression besides treating obsessive-compulsive disorder. Also, it enables people to manage a wide range of disorders such as unipolar depression, panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorders, and social phobia as well as childhood depression and anxiety. Social skills training techniques target multidimensional deficits that with the ability to cause functional disability in individuals with detrimental mental illness and educates people on cognitive and behavioral coping techniques. The training program for cognitive-behavioral social skills, therefore, fosters the acquisition of basic skills self-management skills such as distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotional regulations, and interpersonal effectiveness (Granholm et al., 2005).
Muscle Relaxation Skills Training
Muscle relaxation is an essential therapy for managing anxiety disorders and has continued to play a significant role in the modern treatment of panic and generalized anxiety. Progressive muscle relaxation enhances complete treatments for psychiatric disorders and various mental conditions. The process of muscle relaxation training includes procedures that involve tensing a muscle and releasing the tension in an individual. The muscle relaxation therapy enables stressed, tense, and anxious individuals to find relief from psychological accompaniments of distress when they learn to release the tension (Conrad & Roth, (2007).
Meditation Skills Training
Zeidan et al. (2010) assert that meditation training has proved its effectiveness in increasing mindfulness skills. Research indicates that meditation training is important in promoting positive health outcomes and individual well-being. Meditation decreases individuals' sensitivity to pain, thus reducing anxiety besides enhancing a person's ability to focus on the present condition and be mindful of the future goals. Additionally, meditation training is effective at fostering mindfulness skills among people.
Chiesa & Serretti (2009), psychological and physiologic measurements, as well as somatic complaints and job productivity, are fundamental health outcome measures used to evaluate the success of stress management intervention programs. The effectiveness of stress management intervention programs varies depending on the mechanism used to measure health outcome. For instance, some preventive techniques such as the cognitive-behavioral measures are more effective for evaluating psychological outcomes while muscle relaxation is efficient for psychological outcomes. Additionally, meditation yields the most consistent results across health outcome measures. Moreover, the combination of all three techniques, including muscle relaxation, meditation, and cognitive-behavioral social skills, is more effective across health outcome measures than relying on a single technique. The ultimate results are increased work unit productivity and decreased absenteeism.
Conclusion
There have been several cases of stressful conditions that organizational employees experience, reducing their performance and productivity, thus affecting the company's overall performance. Most companies have embraced the role of managing stress among employees as a personal responsibility, not only to boost the employees' morale and enable a stress-free mindset for good working relationships but also to enhance effectiveness in productivity. Organizations, therefore, develop effective preventive stress management programs to support their employees and help minimize distress. However, the variety of various techniques for managing stress coupled with arrays of health outcome measures employed in stress interventions often make it challenging to conclude the efficacy of each management technique and outcome. Nevertheless, studies show that the combinations o two or more management techniques such as meditation and cognitive-behavioral social skills as well as muscle relaxation produce the most positive and required results across the different health outcomes. The techniques such as meditation, cognitive-behavioral social skills, and muscle relaxation are preventive stress management programs that are effective in enhancing positive employees' physical and psychological health within an organization. Moreover, deciding on the best preventive technique for managing distress depends on the particular health outcomes that the organization targets for change.
References
Chiesa, A., & Serretti, A. (2009). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for stress management in healthy people: a review and meta-analysis. The journal of alternative and complementary medicine, 15(5), 593-600.
Conrad, A., & Roth, W. T. (2007). Muscle relaxation therapy for anxiety disorders: it works but how?. Journal of anxiety disorders, 21(3), 243-264.
Giga, S. I., Cooper, C. L., & Faragher, B. (2003). The development of a framework for a comprehensive approach to stress management interventions at work. International Journal of Stress Management, 10(4), 280.
Granholm, E., McQuaid, J. R., McClure, F. S., Auslander, L. A., Perivoliotis, D., Pedrelli, P., … & Jeste, D. V. (2005). A randomized, controlled trial of cognitive behavioral social skills training for middle-aged and older outpatients with chronic schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162(3), 520-529.
Zeidan, F., Gordon, N. S., Merchant, J., & Goolkasian, P. (2010). The effects of brief mindfulness meditation training on experimentally induced pain. The Journal of Pain, 11(3), 199-209.
