Brain and Behavior, Mindfulness

Mindfulness and College Students

With rising stress/anxiety levels in teens and young adults, a research team out of Cambridge explored the effects of mindfulness therapy on college students. The research team thought mindfulness therapy would help create resilience to stress and cause stress levels to drop. The participants were college students with non-severe mental illness, divided into two groups. The experimental group received Mindfulness Skills for Students along with their regular therapy. The control group simply received their usual treatment. The Mindfulness Skills for Students therapy focused on flexibility, self-discovery, self-compassion, and self-empowerment to promote well-being and self-awareness. The study lasted for 8 weeks and students’ mental health was monitored regularly.

The mindfulness therapy helped lower average CORE-OM stress scores in the experimental group (.87) compared to the control group (1.11). Students who received mindfulness training were 33% less likely to be in a clinical range of distress than the other participants. Even during examination week, the mindfulness training helped lower stress to normal levels while the control group struggled with increasing stress levels. Imagine being able to control your anxiety levels in the most distressing situations! Mindfulness based interventions truly help people manage their anxiety and become more conscious of themselves.

The Lancet Public Health, 2018;3(2), e72-e81

Galante, J., Dufour, G., Vainre, M., Wagner, A. P., Stochl, J., Benton, A., … & Jones, P. B. (2018). A mindfulness-based intervention to increase resilience to stress in university students (the Mindful Student Study): a pragmatic randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Public Health3(2), e72-e81.

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