Comparison of the Efficacy of an Integrative-kinesiological to a Cognitive-behavioural Intervention (IKSIT)

Stress is a common problem with significant consequences for health. It can be a trigger for somatic diseases as well as psychological disorders and leads through missed working days and healthcare cost to a high economic loss. It is for health and economic reasons essential to develop and evaluate effective interventions that can inoculate against stress and build inner strength.

A cognitive-behavioural training for groups that is well evaluated and has shown to be effective is the Stress-Inoculation-Training by Meichenbaum. But it has not yet been thoroughly evaluated in a one to one setting which is more common in a counseling setting. As the public utilization of methods of the complementary and alternative medicine is increasing a rigorous evaluation is needed. Integrative Kinesiology is a popular method that has been said to be effective against stress and its symptoms.

The investigators propose a randomized controlled evaluation and comparison of the interventions to each other and to a waiting-list control group. Hypothesis: Healthy volunteers attending a weekly training during 7 weeks for one hour will show significantly reduced psychobiological reactivity, decreased stress perception and less anxiety to a standardized psychosocial stress test compared to the waiting list group. A total of 64 healthy volunteers will be randomly assigned to one of the three groups. The efficacy of the interventions will be measured through the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) to measure the psychobiological stress reactivity.