Randomised trial tests rational emotive behaviour therapy for academics’ job stress

Academics working in Nigerian universities often carry an invisible load that has little to do with teaching or research. Heavy workloads, inadequate facilities, administrative pressure and the constant demand to publish combine to create a working environment that researchers have long described as saturated with stressors. A new randomised controlled trial, published in the open-access journal BMC Psychology, suggests that a structured psychotherapeutic technique known as rational emotive behaviour therapy, or REBT, can meaningfully reduce work-related stress among university lecturers, and that the benefits last well beyond the end of the intervention itself.

The study, led by Theresa Chinma Agodo and Ifeoma Salome Chukwuma of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, together with colleagues from institutions across Nigeria and South Africa, set out to address a gap that has persisted in the occupational health literature. Although research on stress management in workplaces is abundant, relatively few investigations have rigorously tested interventions specifically for academics in higher education in the Nigerian context. The authors argue that when the university environment is not conducive to staff wellbeing, the expected outcomes of teaching, supervision and scholarship are inevitably hampered, and that evidence-based psychological support for faculty is therefore not a luxury but a necessity.

To test whether REBT could deliver measurable relief, the research team designed a rigorous experimental study. A total of 183 eligible volunteers were recruited from federal universities in Southeast Nigeria. These participants were conveniently recruited but were then randomly allocated to two groups, ensuring that neither the researchers nor chance favoured one group over the other in terms of baseline characteristics that might confound the results. Ninety-two participants were assigned to the intervention group, which received REBT, while ninety-one were assigned to a non-intervention comparison group that continued with their normal working lives for the duration of the study.

The intervention itself was delivered over an eight-week active programme, embedded within a twelve-week trial evaluation window. REBT, developed originally by psychologist Albert Ellis, rests on a deceptively simple premise: it is not events themselves that produce emotional distress, but the irrational beliefs people hold about those events. In the case of an academic under pressure, the triggering event might be a rejected manuscript or an overwhelming teaching schedule, but the resulting stress is mediated by rigid, self-defeating cognitions such as the belief that one must be flawless or that any setback is catastrophic. REBT works by systematically identifying these irrational beliefs, disputing them with logical and empirical arguments, and replacing them with rational alternatives that are more flexible and psychologically sustainable. The therapy is a close cousin of cognitive behaviour therapy, and the two share the same cognitive foundation, but REBT places particular emphasis on philosophical disputation of absolutist thinking.

Participants’ perceptions of stress were quantified using an adopted version of the perceived stress scale, a widely used self-report instrument with strong psychometric properties. In this study the scale demonstrated excellent internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s alpha of .87, meaning that the items reliably measured the same underlying construct of perceived stress. Baseline measurements were taken before the intervention began, allowing the researchers to compare subsequent scores against each participant’s starting point.

The results were striking. When the research team analysed the data using Quade’s analysis of covariance, a non-parametric statistical technique suited to comparing group means while adjusting for baseline differences, they found that academics who had received the REBT intervention reported significantly lower mean stress scores than those in the non-intervention group. The statistical evidence was unambiguous: the comparison yielded an F statistic of 254.215 with degrees of freedom of 1 and 181, a p value below .001, and a partial eta squared of .584. For context, in behavioural science an effect size above .14 is conventionally regarded as large, so a value of .584 represents an exceptionally strong effect, indicating that the treatment accounted for the majority of the variance in stress outcomes between the groups.

Crucially, the benefits were not fleeting. Three months after the intervention had ended, the researchers followed up with the same participants and re-measured their stress levels. The REBT group had maintained their reduced levels of work-related stress, with the follow-up comparison producing an F statistic of 258.815, again with degrees of freedom of 1 and 181, a p value below .001, and a partial eta squared of .588. This durability is a critical finding, because many workplace wellness initiatives show short-lived gains that evaporate once the programme ends. The persistence of the effect suggests that REBT does not merely provide temporary emotional relief but equips academics with cognitive skills they continue to apply long after formal sessions conclude.

The participants came from three academic fields: agriculture, science and vocational education. These disciplines are often characterised by laboratory work, field research and practical training components that add layers of logistical and material stress to the usual academic pressures. The authors note that the consistent stress reduction across these groups strengthens the case that REBT is broadly applicable to faculty in demanding, resource-constrained academic settings.

The trial was conducted with attention to ethical rigor. The study received approval from the University of Nigeria Nsukka ethical committee on research ethics under certificate number REC/FOE/2024/00076, and all participants completed informed consent forms. The researchers registered the trial with the University Hospital Medical Information Network Clinical Trials Registry under number UMIN000061069, although the registration was retrospective, dated 12 January 2026. Participants were informed of their right to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty, and the research team states that the work complied with the Declaration of Helsinki, the internationally recognised ethical framework governing research with human participants. Each participant was given thorough information about the purpose of the study, how their data would be used, guarantees of anonymity, and any risks involved.

The findings arrive at a moment when occupational stress in higher education is attracting growing international concern. University academics worldwide report high rates of burnout, anxiety and emotional exhaustion, driven by precarious employment, expanding administrative duties and intensifying performance metrics. In the Nigerian context, these pressures are compounded by infrastructure deficits and economic instability. If a relatively brief, eight-week cognitive intervention can produce stress reductions of this magnitude and sustain them for months, the implications extend well beyond Southeast Nigeria. The results suggest that universities everywhere might achieve substantial returns by integrating REBT-based programmes into their staff welfare systems.

The authors are clear about the practical recommendation that follows from their data. They advise that the management of universities in Southeast Nigeria make the necessary preparations to ensure that the REBT intervention is applied to the university’s faculty. In other words, the evidence is now strong enough, in their view, to justify institutional adoption rather than further pilot testing. Such programmes would need trained therapists, protected time for staff to attend sessions, and administrative buy-in, but the study provides a template for what a scaled implementation could look like.

There are, as with any study, boundaries around what can be concluded. The trial focused on academics in three specific fields at federal universities in one region of Nigeria, and the participants were conveniently recruited before randomisation, which may limit generalisability to other populations. The perception of stress was measured by self-report, which is standard in this literature but still subject to individual interpretation. The trial registration was retrospective rather than prospective. Yet none of these caveats diminishes the central, statistically robust finding: a brief REBT programme produced large, durable reductions in perceived work stress in a randomised controlled comparison. For a profession whose core business is the cultivation of minds, the idea that the minds of academics themselves can be systematically protected through a structured, evidence-based psychological technique is an idea whose time has come.