Bringing stress management into students’ curricula: Effectiveness of a holistic stress management intervention

By integrating health promoting interventions into higher education, students learn to better cope with high demands and difficult situations and stressors. As these interventions often include singular aspects of stress management and are usually not part of students’ curricula, the effectiveness of a holistic stress management intervention (SMI) was tested in two studies at a large German university. Part of the second study was the implementation of the SMI into a seminar. Results showed that the SMI was effective in lowering perceived stress and increasing contentment with life, well-being, and knowledge about stress and coping compared to the control group. Hence, the implementation of this SMI can contribute in promoting students’ health and could be the basis for implementing holistic SMI in students’ curricula.