AQA Psychological Stress Management

This is an example of a 12 mark essay on the psychological stress management.

Hope it helps!

Outline and evaluate  one or more psychological methods of dealing with stress (12 marks)

Cognitive behavioural therapy deals with faulty thoughts & the behavioural aspects which will aid the individual in coping with any future stressors.  An example of a psychological stress management is stress inoculation training devised by Michenbaum in 1985. There are three steps to this methods in which the client will have to follow in order to deal with stressful situations & it’s negative implications. The first step is called conceptualisation. In this step, the client is told to re call a situation in which they found stressful & difficult to cope with. Both client & therapist discuss, analyse & evaluate the situation in which the aim of the therapist is to teach the client to rationalise their thought s about the stressor & show them that the threatening stressor is solvable by breaking it down into manageable chunks.

Once the therapist is confident that the clients are ready to progress, they move on to step two, skills training & practice. Here, the client is taught relaxation methods, time management & positive thinking which will help aid the client in coping with situations they perceive to be stressful. These skills may be put into practice through role play or imagination to see whether any further training is needed. 

The final step is application. Clients have the opportunity to practice their newly…