Teaching is widely recognized as a stressful profession, which has been connected to burnout and high turnover of qualified teachers. Despite increasing attention on teacher wellbeing, stress management interventions are often underutilized and demonstrate small effect sizes, and research on teachers’ informal stress management practices and desired resources is limited. It is likely that formal and informal intervention effectiveness is limited by teachers’ ability to access existing resources and navigate the complex educational systems they inhabit. The study explored the barriers to and facilitators for teachers’ engagement in formal and informal stress management interventions and desired resources across socioecological levels. Thirty-two teachers participated across four focus groups. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify relevant themes. Personal barriers (e.g., guilt about self-prioritization), environmental barriers (e.g., mixed messages about self-care), and improved campus resources (e.g., scheduled opportunities to destress) were common themes. Recommendations for supporting teachers’ wellbeing include self-care affirming messages from peers and administrators, campus- and district-level changes to remove logistical barriers to stress management, and increased connectedness among campus community members.

Background. The SMART Moms/Mamás LÍSTAS Project was a randomized control trial that tested the efficacy of a prenatal stress management program in reducing stress and cortisol levels among low-income women. The current study is a process evaluation of the stress management program (intervention arm of the original randomized controlled trial) and assessed whether implementation fidelity factors (i.e., intervention delivery, receipt, and enactment) were associated with lower stress (perceived stress, salivary cortisol), improved negative and positive mood states (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), and increased confidence to use relaxation and coping skills. Method. Fifty-five low-income pregnant women (71% Latina, 76% annual income <$20,000) attended weekly group-based sessions over an 8-week period in which a clinically trained researcher taught relaxation and coping skills. Process evaluation measures were obtained via participant self-report and videotaped class sessions that were coded for delivery, receipt, and enactment of the intervention to determine which implementation factors were associated with changes in program outcomes (stress, mood, confidence) over the 8-week period. Results. Women in stress management showed a significant reduction in their stress and cortisol levels ( p < .001), improvements in negative and positive mood states ( p < .001) and were more confident in using relaxation and coping skills postintervention (74%). The implementation factors of delivery (i.e., instructor adherence to intervention content; p = .03) and enactment (i.e., participant use of intervention skills; p = .02) were most associated with improvements in program outcomes. Conclusion. These findings highlight that implementation factors should be considered when delivering stress management interventions in underserved communities.

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A recent 12-week intervention study revealed that making conceptual art is linked to improved cognitive health among community-dwelling older adults (Brown et al., 2020). Unknown, however, is whether the intervention experience differed for participants who exhibited more versus less improvement. This pilot study examined 163 excerpts from semi-structured interviews with cognitively normal, older adult participants (N = 11, Mean age = 72.82). Using thematic analysis and data displays on Dedoose, key themes were distilled regarding intervention acceptability. Participants exhibiting less cognitive improvement more often mentioned personally connecting to topics of dementia and aging through art, but more often mentioned scheduling conflicts. Conversely, participants exhibiting greater cognitive improvement more often mentioned experiencing intellectual enrichment, but feeling insecure about their art capabilities. Novel art activities may be personally meaningful and cognitively stimulating for some participants, but emotionally frustrating for others. Future work should explore ways to optimize arts-based interventions for older participants.