Teaching Children to Cope With Stressful Experiences: Initial Implementation and Evaluation of a Primary Prevention Program

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Abstract
Reported on an initial implementation and evaluation of a 13-session school-based primary prevention program designed to teach children coping skills. Practice of the skills was applied to five stressful experiences that are likely to occur to a significant number of children: parental separation/divorce, loss of a loved one, move to a new home or school, spending significant time in self-care, and being "different"–ethnically, physically and so forth. Four fourth-grade classrooms (N = 92) were assigned to either an immediate- or delayed-intervention group. Program effects were found on improvement in children's ability to generate a repertoire of effective solutions to the stressful situations, as well as in their self-efficacy to implement effective solutions; these effects were generally maintained or strengthened at 5-month follow-up. No effects were found on knowledge of facts about the stressors or size of children's support networks. Process evaluation is also discussed.

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