An evaluation of a six-week intervention designed to facilitate coping with psychological stress

Community dwelling Korean adults (N = 40) coping with the stress of severe mental illness were randomly assigned to a six-week differentiation further ing intervention (experimental) or a directed problem-solving treatment pro gram (control) and administered pre- and posttreatment measures including t he Morey Personality Assessment Screener (PAS) and Group Embedded Figures T est (GEFT). As predicted, the experimental group showed greater improvement on 6 out of 10 mental health subscales (PAS) and on the GEFT than the cont rols. For the entire sample, differentiation gainers showed more improvemen t on three PAS subscales compared with the no change or loss in differentia tion groups. A three-month follow-up showed greater attendance at mental he alth appointments for the experimental group over controls and for total sa mple differentiation gainers over nongainers. Implications are discussed of this empirically tested model of a community intervention to facilitate co ping with stress and enhancing competence, (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.