A Scalable Intervention for Stress Management Practices

College students experience a wide range of stressors during their studies, with many students experiencing levels of stress that can be clinically significant, such as anxiety or depression. Counseling centers on college campuses have seen a rise in students seeking mental health support or stress relief, but there exists a discrepancy in the level of need versus the support that can be provided. Stress management interventions, such as self-care mobile applications and devices, have risen in popularity given their relative accessibility and implementation of stress relieving interventions such as regulated breathing. Regulated breathing has been shown to be a reliable and effective form of stress relief, however its implementation within various eHealth interventions and related devices can come into conflict when used in educational settings. Mobile apps and biofeedback devices (e.g., chest straps, inhalers), can be contextually inappropriate, cumbersome, and potentially stigmatizing for students. To overcome these barriers, the PI developed the AIRpen, a simple, affordable, multi-functional stress management device that is designed to fit into the fabric of students' lives to potentially optimize the delivery, practice, and fidelity of diaphragmatic breathing (DB) interventions in real- world settings. With anecdotal and empirical evidence supporting the device as feasible and acceptable in real-world academic settings, this study will build upon prior work and measure the acceptance of the intervention and assess whether using the original and a "smart" version of the device as a stress relieving tool produces physiological and subjective effects in a laboratory setting.