The comparison of effect of a psycho-educational program for preventing traumatic stress with individual help-seeking styles.
Poster B121, Friday, October 21, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Le Baron
Kaori Osawa1; 1Konan University
Wessely et al. (2008) argued that psycho-education could be effective in the prevention of traumatic stress. However, empirical research about the effectiveness of psycho-education is scant. Previous studies (e.g., Ehlers & Steil, 1995; Michael et al., 2005) have shown that the pain caused by traumatic memory recall may be a factor causing the maintenance or exacerbation of posttraumatic stress responses such as symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On the basis of these previous studies, Osawa (2015, 2016) conducted the psycho-educational program focused on traumatic memory recall and indicates that the program may have an effect on promoting self-efficacy for recall and preventing traumatic stress responses from getting worse. The purpose of this study is to compare the effect of psycho-educational program with individual help-seeking styles. Participants of this study were eighty-one Japanese undergraduates (Male=18, Female=63; mean ages=19.86, SD= .67). The psycho-educational program was designed by some cognitive-behavioral techniques. A total of 2 sessions (60-70 minutes per 1 session) was conducted. As the measures of help-seeking styles, participants completed the scale for measuring help-seeking styles (Nagai, 2013) at pre-sessions. As the measures of the effect of the program, participants also rated the degree of fear of recall (0-100), the degree of probability of coping with recall (0-100), and the degree of probability of helping traumatized people with recovering from distress caused by recall (0-100) at pre- sessions, post-sessions and 1-month follow-up. Implications of this study for the development possibility and availability of psycho-education for preventing traumatic stress were discussed.
Topic Area: Psychosocial Interventions