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Being conscious of our feelings, sentiments, perceptions in the body, and our environment in each moment is called as mindfulness. This paper informs us about how mindfulness can help us to minimize our anxiety, stress, and in emotion management. This topic is interesting to me because this information regarding mindfulness is new to me, and if I use it in my life, then I can lead a healthier life.
Precisely the connection of mindfulness and signs of depression and anxiety is studied and an experiment is conducted along in which basic roles of awareness, acceptance, impulse control, and emotion regulation are observed. This experiment was performed on 333 Chinese population between 16 to 28 years of age, including both genders. In this experiment, mindfulness is described as being conscious and accepting negative emotions. The association between consciousness and acceptance of negative emotions and mindfulness is observed in this experiment.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an 8-week meditation program known to diminish anxiety, depression, and progress psychological well-being. To know further how mindfulness can help minimize anxiety, observational study about mindfulness-based stress reduction program was conducted. This study shows that people undertaking this program undoubtedly get profited with stress minimization. The studies mentioned above were conducted in a controlled environment through a questionnaire with a stable state of mind of participants. If the identical examination was conducted in a distressing atmosphere with a state of mind is disturbed purposefully, would be results obtained then similar?
Introduction
In this chaotic world, people are continually doing their routines since morning they get up to the minute; they fall asleep. The age, gender, or profession does not affect these routines. These tasks were performed without being aware of them. Being aware of our current situation, whether it is a process, thought, or situation is termed mindfulness. Mindfulness is taken from Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan meditation techniques. The term mindfulness is built on the word Sati in Pali language and the word Smriti in the Sanskrit language, which means remembrance . Remembering our thoughts while doing day to day tasks is so-called mindfulness. This is done at any instant in a day. For example, while drinking a glass of water reminding our consciousness that: I am drinking this glass of water and this will help me to quench my thirst’, – this simple thought of being aware of drinking water can induce a drastic change in our body as well as in mind. Similarly, this can be applied to every area of our life, and if we do it, it will change our life dramatically.
Unfortunately, people are unable to do these simple tasks. Their mind is performing tasks which are different from their physical world. Mind and body are continually fighting to perform on single job. The mind will either wander in future fantasies or historical experiences. This will lead to stress in an individual as he or she is performing a job with the only brain without emotion in it. If a person is completing tasks without being aware of what he or she is doing, then that tasks became a mechanical thing, and it degrades in its quality. If we start our day with such a collection of quality-less tasks and end with same, then we find ourselves in a chaotic environment where we cannot find any satisfaction or peace. This will again lead distress in an person.
Depression is a common mental sickness. Mindfulness can be an effective weapon versus depression and anxiety. A study carried out which spotlight that there is a longitudinal association within mindfulness and depressive signs through mediating processes like consciousness, acceptance, impulse control, and emotion management. A similar association is found out midst mindfulness and anxiety indications. The study urges the employ of mindfulness actions in psychological healthiness as well; it enlarges the mindfulness literature (Cheung & Ng, 2018).
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program is a meditation program which helps to deal with stress-related signs. It supports to improvement in depression, anxiety, and sleep quality. This observational study carried out by Jeferry M. Greeson about MBSR affirms that mindfulness is enlarged among people who followed this program, which leads to decrease sleep disturbance and decreased stress-related indications (Greeson et al., 2018).
Recently I came across a book 10-Minute Mindfulness: 71 Habits for Living in the Present Moment by S. J. Scott and Barrie Davenport. This book illustrates several approaches for mindfulness, which are simple and easy to do in 10 minutes time span (Scott & Davenport, 2017). While reading this book, I develop my interest in mindfulness, and then I started to study this concept in detail.
Mindfulness and Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety (Cheung & Ng, 2018)
Mindfulness is getting alert of the situation, accepting it, and responding according to it. Depression indicators consist of loss of interest in ideas, once pleasurable, difficulty in admitting undesirable circumstances, restlessness, and irritability. If we perceive intensely, then indications of depression complement mindfulness. The study conducted which shows this association using mediating processes like acceptance, consciousness, impulse control, and emotion regulation. The study is took place in the following fashion (Cheung & Ng, 2018):
Method: A total of 333 Chinese residents participated in this study in Hong Kong. These people are in the age range of 18 to 26. This includes 95 men and 238 women. The study is completed through a questionnaire in consecutive two years, four times in six months gap. Multi-group Path Analysis also Bootstrapping methods were applied to realize the results of the study.
Measures: Succeeding attributes were quantified midst the contributor of this study.
- Mindfulness
- Awareness of negative emotions
- Acceptance of negative emotions
- Impulse Control difficulties
- Limited Access to Emotion Regulation Strategies
- Depressive symptoms
- Anxiety symptoms
Data Analysis: All above study variables are preliminarly analyzed for zero-order correlations, means, and standard deviations. The fundamental hypothesis of this study is then tested by multi-group path analysis. MPLUS, Version 7 is an analytical software which is used to do exploratory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, item response theory analysis, survival analysis, growth modeling, complex survey data analysis (WWW3). This software exercised to observe the path model of mediation processes like consciousness, attention, impulse control problems, and little approach to emotion regulation strategies among mindfulness and alteration results, including depressive and anxiety indications.
Result: The results obtained on the connection based on – mindfulness and little admittance to sentiment guideline, mindfulness, and depressive signs, mindfulness, and anxiety signs. The bootstrapping method was modified to test data of the mediating functions of consciousness, acceptance, and impulse control difficulties among mindfulness and limited admittance to emotion guideline approaches. One thousand bootstrap samples were tested with substitutes. The incidental effects of mindfulness and partial admittance to emotion guideline policies were significant before bootstrapping. Then after bootstrapping the indirect outcomes of mindfulness on partial access to emotion guideline approaches were examined. The outcomes acclaim that mindfulness is linked with awareness, reception of negative emotions with lesser difficulties in impulse control, and larger admittance to emotion regulation stratagems.
Correspondingly, the unintended outcomes of mindfulness and depressive signs are recognized with the bootstrapping process. The answers suggest that greater consciousness and acceptance of emotions, which in turn associated with lower impulse control difficulties were further associated with greater access to emotion regulation strategies and fewer depressive signs. However, the results show that the indirect effects of mindfulness and anxiety signs are not significant. Hence the process used here does not find it useful to obtain results.
As the above study demonstrations us that there is a correlation between mindfulness and depression and anxiety signs, additional study using MBSR program is carried out to understand whether increased mindfulness will decrease depression indicators or not.
Mindful Based Stress Reduction Program (Greeson et al., 2018)
Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment’, – Jon Kabat-Zinn (WWW1.)
Professor Jon Kabat Zinn started this program in the 1970s. This is a meditation program which helps individuals to minimize stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. It is eight weeks long program which comprises of 150 minutes daily practice of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga with one complete day session between sixth and seventh week. It also embraces 45 minutes of everyday homework practices.
J.M. Greeson conducted an observational study about mindfulness and effects of mindfulness on two measures i.e., sleep quality as well as depression indications. Author hypotheses that sleep aspect, depression warning sign, and mindfulness are linked. Through the MBSR program, the suggestion of this study was scrutinized, and participants who undergone through the MBSR program showed increase mindfulness besides decrease sleep disturbance then depressive indications. This study was conducted in the following fashion:
Method: 322 individuals who enrolled in the MBSR program participated in this study. They completed a self-report question before and after appearing the MBSR program through the internet. The participants of this study were mainly women who were well educated and working. Out of these participants, more than 50 percent of participants inhibit the signs of depression and poor sleep quality. The survey is conducted one week before the first MBSR session and one week after the last MBSR session. The survey result was observed by ViewFlash software. The study is followed by MBSR program conducted by trained professionals who have significant experience in meditation field.
Measures: Following measures were recorded during the study. These measures are as follows.
- Cognitive and Affective Scale-Revised
- Cohen-Hoberman Inventory of Physical Symptoms (CHIPS)
- Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)
- Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS)
- White bear suppression inventory
- Acceptance and action questionnaire
- Emotion regulation questionnaire
Data analysis: SPSS software version 24 is used for data analysis for this study. The statistical significance of pre-post MBSR changes in mindfulness, stress indicators, and emotion regulation are examined through paired tests. The direct association between these variables are examined via Bivariate correlations. Partial correlations are also used to test whether hypothesized associations between changes in mindfulness and changes in stress indications and sleep quality, respectively, remained significant when controlling for changes in each trans-diagnostic outcome measure. In the end, seven covariates were added to the partial correlation analyses to test whether observed associations were independent of demographic characteristics such as age, gender, education, household income, and employment status, as well as prior meditation experience and expectation to benefit from the MBSR.
Results: Direct association is established between increased mindfulness and decreased stress-related indicators and an increase in sleep quality.
Conclusion
Mindfulness meditation is started in the 1970s. Through a couple of decades, this technique significantly emerged. It is considered as one of the mind-body intervention methods. This technique cultivates positive psychology in an individual. According to a blog post in Positive Psychology Program, mindfulness not only promotes well-being but also improves working memory. It can be a self-care tool for an individual or wellness busters for a group of employees (WWW2). From the study, it is seen that mindfulness can decrease signs of depression (Cheung & Ng, 2018). Another study which also indicates that the MBSR program increases your mindfulness, which in turn decreases depression indications and improves sleep quality (Greeson et al., 2018).
Above researches or studies were performed keeping positive effects of mindfulness, and according to that, hypotheses were stated and checked. However, are there any adverse effects of mindfulness? Has anybody till date observed them, and if so, are there experiments or studies were conducted to examine them? These unanswered questions need to be answered so that we can use mindfulness with its full potential while keeping its positive effects and mindfully discarding its adverse or side effects.
References:
- Cheung, R. Y. et al., (2019). Mindfulness and symptoms of depression and anxiety: The underlying roles of awareness, acceptance, impulse control, and emotion regulation. Mindfulness, 10(6), 1124-1135.
- Greeson, J. M. et al., (2018). Mindfulness meditation targets transdiagnostic symptoms implicated in stress-related disorders: Understanding relationships between changes in mindfulness, sleep quality, and physical symptoms. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2018. Volume 2018, Article ID 4505191, 10 pages.
- WWW1. Online Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
- WWW2. 7 Great Benefits of Mindfulness in Positive Psychology Accessed Apr 9, 2019.
- WWW3. Mplus at a Glance. < https://www.statmodel.com/glance.shtml>
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