Stress Therapy Offer To Ill Jobless: Really?

According to The Guardian, the government is about to offer stress therapy to people who have had to quit work because of stress or depression.

So, would this be a separate plan to the Layard proposal for enhanced access to cognitive-behavioural therapy? Or is this a separate proposal? If so, is this a well-researched and validated programme? Or is it a nice, worthy sounding initiative that is not expected to go anywhere?

Why focus on stress therapy? Has anyone looked at the possibility of focusing on people's character strengths and virtues and using those to help someone to help themselves? Has there been any investigation of resilience work that would not only relieve stress in the short-term but sustain it? Is accepting the health benefits of positive emotion still too much of a leap of faith?

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project