Individuals who work in the helping professions (physicians, counselors, nurses, pastors, and social workers) often work with individuals in stressful crisis situations. In addition to working in high stress situations, helpers in rural areas also suffer from isolation from support networks and peers that are available to urban helpers. This isolation may contribute to rural helpers' burnout and symptoms of excessive stress. The Rural Health Outreach Program (RHOP) was developed to help these rural helpers cope with stress and burnout. The RHOP presents stress management programs through rural community agencies to identify stress, origins of stress, symptoms of excessive stress, and techniques to help manage stress and prevent burnout. The programs are skills-based and cover such topics as relaxation, massage, program development, confrontation, motivation, visualization, problem solving, conflict management, communication, and time management. The programs are presented in a basic format of "Tell, Show, Do." Results from the program thus far are encouraging. All community agencies that have started the program are continuing. The program seems successful in that the helpers in the rural areas report more satisfaction in their work and they are still on the job. (NB)