Do Something Different as an Intervention for Perceived Stress Reduction in Graduate Counseling Students

Abstract

Empowering graduate counseling students to alleviate their perceived stress and minimize undesirable health effects may improve their capacity to adapt and successfully manage perceived stress during their training and in their future counseling work. In this nonrandomized pretest/posttest study, Do Something Different, a digital behavior change platform, was used as a mobile health intervention by sending short message service (SMS) texts to change automatic unhealthy behaviors. Perceived stress, anxiety, depression, and behavioral flexibility were measured in a sample of graduate counseling students (N = 123). The program was effective in reducing perceived stress among these students. The findings provide direction for reducing students’ perceived stress by incorporating SMS technology in graduate counseling programs.

Keywords:

• Behavior change interventions
• Do Something Different
• mHealth
• mobile health intervention
• stress reduction
• wellness