Frontiers in Psychology
Frontiers in Psychology
5 years ago

A Randomized Controlled Trial on Functional Relaxation as an Adjunct to Psychoeducation for Stress.

Probst, Dinkel, Pieh, Sattel, Gebhardt, Lahmann
This randomized controlled trial investigated whether adding the psychodynamically based body-oriented psychotherapy "Functional Relaxation" (FR) to psychoeducation (PE) is more effective than PE alone to reduce stress and stress-associated complaints. Eighty-one participants with elevated stress-levels, ≥50 points on the global scale of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ), received either 10 sessions of manualized FR + PE (n = 42) or two sessions of manualized PE alone (n = 39) in a group setting. Six FR trainers took part in this study. Stress-level (PSQ) was the primary outcome and secondary outcomes were depression (PHQ-9) and somatization (PHQ-15). Multilevel models for discontinuous change revealed that FR + PE was more helpful to reduce stress-levels than PE from pre-treatment to post-treatment (t0 → t1) as well as from pre-treatment to 6-month follow-up (t0 → t2) (both p < 0.05) with effect sizes (d) being medium for PE (dt0 → t1 = 0.57; dt0 → t2 = 0.67) and large for FR + PE (dt0 → t1 = 1.57; dt0 → t2 = 1.39). Moreover, FR + PE affected depression and somatization more positively than did PE from t0 to t1 as well as from t0 to t2 (all p < 0.05). Effect sizes for depression were small to medium for PE (dt0 → t1 = 0.52; dt0 → t2 = 0.37) and large for FR + PE (dt0 → t1 = 1.04; dt0 → t2 = 0.95). Effect sizes for somatization were small for PE (dt0 → t1 = 0.18; dt0 → t2 = 0.19) and medium to large for FR + PE (dt0 → t1 = 0.73; dt0 → t2 = 0.93). In summary, the combination of FR and PE was more effective than PE alone. The results of the present trial provide first evidence of FR as a potent component of stress interventions. Adding FR to such interventions might better help prevent clinically relevant disorders such as depression or somatization.

Publisher URL: http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01553

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01553

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.