UTILITY OF RELAXATION TRAINING WITH CHILDREN IN SCHOOL SETTINGS - A PLEA FOR REALISTIC GOAL-SETTING AND EVALUATION

Background. School-based relaxation training programmes are a popular means of helping children with anxiety problems such as headaches and test anxiety. Aims. Our major objective is to evaluate the empirical s tatus of school-based relaxation training programmes. Contents. Focusi ng on progressive muscle relaxation training, we show how this adult t raining procedure has been modified for use with children. Several tra ining issues are discussed including the questions of live versus reco rded instruction and individual versus group instruction. We also disc uss the evaluation of relaxation training programmes in school setting s, highlighting issues of reliability and validity. Conclusions. Our r eview of studies examining the efficacy of school-based relaxation tra ining shows that improvements are usually modest and of dubious clinic al or educational significance. Consequently we suggest that when rela xation training is used with school children treatment goals should be more modest or, that if improvements in specific performance areas ar e sought, then more comprehensive treatment packages be developed whic h can influence the successful performance of children in target areas and reduce anxiety to normal levels.