The effectiveness of a new, coping flexibility intervention as compared with a cognitive-behavioural intervention in managing work stress

In typical stress management programmes, working adults acquire various coping skills for managing work stress. In addition to building coping skills, we propose the inclusion of a "meta skill" of coping flexibility, which helps individuals to recognize the distinctions among the coping requirements of diverse stressful events and to facilitate employment of appropriate skills for handling the specific demands of those events. Our study tested this proposal by comparing the efficacy of a new coping flexibility intervention with that of a commonly adopted cognitive-behavioural intervention in reducing depression. We randomly assigned 161 healthy Chinese working adults (55 men, 106 women, M age =32 years) to (1) attend a coping flexibility intervention for acquiring both coping skills and coping flexibility, (2) attend a cognitive-behavioural intervention for acquiring coping skills only, or (3) a waiting list to receive an intervention after the study had been completed. Participants were followed up four months later. Those who had attended the coping flexibility intervention reported the largest increase in levels of coping flexibility, and such an increase corresponded to a reduction in depression immediately and four months after the intervention. These results indicate the value of teaching individuals to adapt their coping strategies to specific requirements of stressful situations.