Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Life Skills Training for Iranian Working Women

Objective: Working women are predisposed to some psychiatric symptoms or disorders due to their life styles or working conditions; such as long working hours, being away from their children during the day, and having various roles as an employee, a spouse, mother and a housekeeper, which creates daily stress, feelings of guilt, anxiety, dysphoric mood or interpersonal problems, all of which may lead to more serious mental disorders. Therefore, life skills training may help them to cope better with the problems of their life styles, and promote their mental health.

Methods: In a semi-experimental study, 84 female university employees attended1-2 sessions of life skills training weekly for 10 weeks. The duration of each session was 2 hours. Participants completed a GHQ-28 form, prior to entering the training course, and again, 2 weeks after the completion of the workshops. The statistical test used in this study, was t test for dependent variables.

Results: A number of participants exhibited psychiatric symptoms, such as suffering from depression, anxiety, psychosomatic disorder and social functioning problems. The scores of the means significantly reduced in post-test situations, except for depressive symptoms subscale which was minimal. The subscales of those whose total scores were above the cut off point (23) were reduced to half.

Conclusion: The result of this study shows that life skills training can be an effective method in reducing anxiety, sleep and somatic symptoms, as well as social function disorders, however, contrary to many published studies, LST had no impact on depressive symptoms of our subjects.