Helping female adolescents prepare to cope with irrational thinking via preventive cognitive self-instruction...

Used Meichenbaum's (1977) cognitive self-instruction ideas to prepare a primary prevention program designed to help recipients prepare to cope with irrational thinking. Female adolescents attending a boarding school and who volunteered to participate were assigned randomly to a group instruction and a self-instruction condition. On measures of knowledge about cognitive self-instruction and confidence in the mode of presentation, the group condition seemed superior. Four members of the group condition took advantage of an offer for individual counseling while none of those in the self-instructional condition referred themselves.