August 12, 2003
BIRMINGHAM, AL — The School of Nursing at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) has received its largest grant ever, $2.1 million, from the National Institute of Nursing Research. The grant will fund a study to implement and assess an anger and stress management program for children.
“In a preliminary study of 9 to 11 year olds, more than 50 percent reported moderate to high levels of anger, and most could identify five specific stressors in their lives,” said Marti Rice, Ph.D., associate professor of nursing at UAB. “The program is designed to help children deal with this anger and stress.”
The four-year study will begin this fall in the Talladega County School System in Alabama. “All together, we will enroll approximately 450 fourth graders,” Rice said. “Most children have a sense of self around age 9 or 10 and can identify things that make them stressed or angry. Ideally, an anger and stress management program would be introduced to children at an earlier age, but the instrumentation to measure anger and stress in younger children is limited.”
The 17-month program is designed to help children recognize their own feelings of anger and stress as well as others’ feelings of anger and to develop cognitive behavioral and physical activity strategies to deal with both. “The cognitive behavioral component will include, among other activities, role playing, imagery and discussion,” Rice said. “The physical activity component will include low-, moderate- and high-intensity non-competitive activities.”
Children will participate in 45-minute cognitive behavioral sessions once a week for 18 weeks, then every other week, then once a month in their fifth-grade year. They will participate in physical activity sessions once a day for 30 minutes for the first 18 weeks, then in periodic reinforcement sessions for nine months.
Researchers will use various measures to evaluate the program and its effect on children. “We will look at psychological factors, such as level of anger, anger expression, stress and coping resources; physiological factors, such as blood pressure and levels of cortisol (a hormone produced in response to stress); behavioral factors, such as their behavior in class; and health outcomes, such as school absences and number of viral infections,” Rice said.
Half of the students enrolled in the study will participate in the cognitive behavioral and physical activity sessions and half will not. “Following the study, we will compare the level of anger, stress and coping skills of the children who completed the sessions with those who did not take part in the sessions,” Rice said.
Other nurse researchers involved with the study are Barbara Smith, Ph.D., Duck Hee-Kang, Ph.D., and Michael Weaver, Ph.D., with UAB, and Carol Howell, Ph.D., with Georgia State University.