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Monash shares stress management techniques

26 October 2005

Harvard University will use a Monash stress management program as a template for a pilot program it is establishing in its medicine faculty.

The program, developed by Dr Craig Hassed (pictured), from Monash's Department of General Practice, teaches first-year students mindfulness-based stress management as part of their personal and professional development.

As well as using the Monash program as a guide for its course, Harvard is giving each of its 300 first and second-year students the Monash course text Know Thyself, written by Dr Hassed.

The program was developed by Dr Hassed in 1991 and was initially offered through the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and, later, through postgraduate training with the Monash Department of General Practice. It was an elective unit for undergraduates until 2001 and has been part of the core curriculum of the Monash medical degree since 2002.

Dr Hassed said the program aimed to enhance the health and wellbeing of medical students.

"The idea is to help students better manage their own stress and mental health," he said. "But it also provides them with a foundation for helping their patients in the future to deal with stress."

The six-week Monash program includes tutorials and lectures that help improve eating and sleeping habits, exercise, stress reduction and mood regulation.

Dr Hassed said there had been a lot of research and clinical interest in mindfulness-based stress management techniques in recent years, but Monash had led the way in integrating these therapies into medical education.

"Monash has had this curriculum in place for more than a decade," he said.

"It is a tribute to the medical faculty at Monash that it put its efforts into investing curriculum time and resources in the health and wellbeing of students. Hopefully this sort of program might serve as a model for other medical schools in the future."