Testing the Efficacy of a New Intervention Against Stress and Psychosomatic Symptoms

Abstract

The present study is conducted with a view to providing the first evidence in support of a new cognitive behavioral intervention that was designed to decrease several stress-related mental and somatic symptoms of health professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic in Greece, as well as to increase resilience and self-efficacy. The study is a randomized-control trial, and Factorial (2*3) Mixed ANOVAs were employed to present the effect of the intervention on 6 variables (psychosomatics, stress, anxiety, depression, resilience and self-efficacy) over time (as baseline [T1], post-intervention [T2] and 3-month follow-up [T3]). The intervention was delivered by two different instructors. 48 Greek health professionals (Mage= 36.1, SD= 12.66) were randomly allocated in two groups, as one group received the intervention (Nexperimental= 25), while the other nothing (Nnon-experimental= 20) with no great loses for both groups. All variables were measured through self-reported tools including PSSQ-29 (psychosomatics), the Greek versions of DASS-21 (stress, anxiety and depression), NMRQ (resilience) and GSE (self-efficacy). The results show that the intervention group showed significant differences in all DVs between T1 and T2 as well as between T1 and T2, while there were no differences between T2 and T3. The results of the present study are limited, but still promising for the efficiency and efficacy of the new intervention. The study took place through the spread of COVID-19 in Greece and thus new studies may test the intervention on other conditions. Keywords: Psychosomatic symptoms; Stress management; COVID-19; randomized-control trial; RCT