Effects of the HORS‐PISTE universal anxiety prevention program measured according to initial level of student problems

Abstract

Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent psychopathologies in Western adolescents and have been on the rise in recent years. Not only does anxiety disrupt the daily lives of the young people who suffer from it, it can also have harmful behavioral, psychological, social, and academic effects. Given this, there is a pressing need to implement universal anxiety prevention programs for adolescents in one of their main living environments, the school. This type of program has the twofold advantage of reaching all adolescents before the onset of more significant symptoms and of promoting access to services for young people in difficulty. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of the HORS‐PISTE—Exploration Cycle 1 program developed by the RBC Center for Academic Expertise in Mental Health, based on the initial level of problems presented by the students, using a preexperimental pretest–posttest design. A total of 2276 students in grades 7 and 8, with an average age of 12.65 years, from 16 high schools participated in the pretest and posttest evaluations. The results showed that the students who participated in the HORS‐PISTE program reported a significant change in the intended direction for several of the variables examined between T1 and T2. In particular, decreases in anxiety symptoms, fear of being judged by others, perfectionism, internet addiction, intolerance of uncertainty, and anxiety interference, as well as an increase in the sense of self‐efficacy, were observed between T1 and T2 for both boys and girls. The results also showed that students who presented at T1 with more significant anxiety symptoms and proximal risk factors experienced greater improvement than did those with a moderate or low level of initial problems. Overall, the results of this evaluative study of the HORS‐PISTE program are promising, demonstrating positive changes in symptoms and in the main proximal risk factors for anxiety, in particular among students who initially presented with high levels of problems. This study therefore demonstrates the relevance of implementing this type of prevention program in high schools.

Changes in Anxiety Symptoms and Their Correlates in Adolescents Participating in a School-Based Anxiety Prevention Program During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…These findings are supported by other studies conducted in the pandemic context (Decosimo et al, 2019;Gresham et al, 2021;Mirabito & Verhaeghen, 2024). They are also supported by the results shown in an evaluation of the program carried out before the pandemic that suggest that the program contributes to a positive change regarding the anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as key proximal risk factors, as Therriault et al (2023) showed.…”

“…Previous evaluations of the universal prevention component have shown a decrease in symptoms related to various anxiety disorders, as well as reductions in perfectionism, intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive avoidance, and impact of anxiety on school and social life, along with an increase in feelings of self-efficacy (Therriault et al, 2023). The program was implemented in more than 20 high schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the objective of the present article is to measure its contribution in the pandemic context to several anxiety-related variables, specifically: (1) anxiety symptoms and interference; (2) cognitive and behavioral vulnerabilities targeted by the program; and 3) associated symptoms and behaviors.…”