Outcome Study of the ReDO Intervention for Women With Stress-related Disorders

This project is about developing and evaluating a novel work rehabilitation program, Redesigning Daily Occupations (ReDO), for women with stress-related disorders. It is a co-operation project between Lund University, the Social Insurance Office, and the health care services of the County of Halland. The ReDO intervention focuses on how people compose their everyday lives. Supporting people in how to change and modify their patterns of daily occupations is a new intervention method for people with stress-related disorders, but it has been shown to be effective in improving quality of life and self-rated health in other target groups. The basic idea is that re-structuring of an individual's lifestyle and pattern of daily occupations will lead to a healthier balance between the occupations of everyday life, and that this balance will promote wellness and increased work capacity. The program is group based and comprises 16 weeks, with sessions 2 x 2 hours per week, followed by 3-4 booster sessions.

The aim of the research project is to evaluate the outcomes of ReDO for women with stress-related disorders. The hypothesis is that the ReDO group will improve more than a comparison group receiving "care-as-usual" (CAU) regarding return to work, sick leave, and different aspects of health and well-being. group in all these respects.

The project is a quasi-experimental study. It covers the time period from entering the program to a 12-month follow-up. According to initial plans, the first 50 women who entered the ReDO program and fitted the selection criteria would be included. A power analysis indicated that 40 individuals in each group were needed to detect a medium effect size (of 0.6) with 80% power at p<.05. Forty-two women were actually recruited to the ReDO intervention. A matched comparison group was selected among those clients at the Social Insurance Office who get (CAU). The match was made on specific diagnosis, age, family situation (civil status and number of children), type of occupation and duration of sick leave. Thus, in all 84 women take part in the project. The data consist of registry information from the Social Insurance Office (SIO) and questionnaires targeting socio-demographics, perceived stress, and different aspects of health and well-being.