THE ROLE OF EMOTION CONTROL AND EMOTIONAL RUMINATION IN STRESS MANAGEMENT-TRAINING

The present paper reports on three outcome studies evaluating the effe ctiveness of a new stress management training program. In contrast to conventional stress management, which tends to emphasize life-events, the symptoms of stress and relaxation, the new program is based on emo tional rumination, emotion control, and attention control. The trainin g developed from a series of experimental studies on the role of emoti onal inhibition and rumination in prolonging physiological recovery fr om stress, and the findings reported here were obtained from a series of applied studies involving police officers from a police force in th e North of England. The first two studies employed both self-reported and objective measures of change to demonstrate that the training prod uced significant increases in job satisfaction and reduced absenteeism , while the results of the final study showed that the benefits of the program were enhanced by follow-up training.