Abstract
PurposeMedical students commonly experience elevated psychological stress and poor mental health. To improve psychological wellbeing, a 5-week mindfulness-based lifestyle course was delivered to a first-year undergraduate medical student cohort as part of the core curriculum. This study investigated the effects of the program on mental health, perceived stress, study engagement, dispositional mindfulness, and whether any improvements were related to amount of formal and/or informal mindfulness practice.MethodsParticipants were first year undergraduate medical students (N = 310, 60% female, M = 18.60 years) with N = 205 individuals completing pre and post course questionnaires in a 5-week mindfulness-based lifestyle intervention. At pre- and post-intervention, participants completed the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form, the Perceived Stress Scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale for Students, the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, and the Mindfulness Adherence Questionnaire.ResultsMental health, perceived stress, study engagement, and mindfulness all improved from pre- to post-intervention (all p values < .001). Improvements on these outcome measures were inter-related such that PSS change scores were negatively correlated with all other change scores, FMI change scores were positively correlated with MHC-SF and UWES-S change scores, the latter of which was positively correlated with MHC-SF change scores (all p values < .01). Finally, observed improvements in all of these outcomes were positively related to informal practice quality while improved FMI scores were related to formal practice (all p values < .05).ConclusionsA 5-week mindfulness-based program correlates with improving psychological wellbeing and study engagement in medical students. These improvements particularly occur when students engage in informal mindfulness practice compared to formal practice.
Highlights
It is well documented that medical students experience higher levels of psychological distress and have poorer mental health, including increased rates of depression, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorder relative to non-medical students [1,2,3,4,5]
Improvements on these outcome measures were inter-related such that Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) change scores were negatively correlated with all other change scores, Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI) change scores were positively correlated with Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale for Students (UWES-S) change scores, the latter of which was positively correlated with MHC-SF change scores
A 5-week mindfulness-based program correlates with improving psychological wellbeing and study engagement in medical students
Summary
It is well documented that medical students experience higher levels of psychological distress and have poorer mental health, including increased rates of depression, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorder relative to non-medical students [1,2,3,4,5]. Distress in medical students has been shown to develop during the first year of training across multiple domains of psychological distress, including poorer quality of life, higher fatigue, and burnout. The prevalence is alarmingly high with estimates showing that 50% of 2000 medical students surveyed experienced multiple forms of distress and had thoughts of dropping out, which increased the risk of suicidal ideation by 15 times relative to those without any reported distress [10]. It is important to investigate scalable prevention strategies to reduce distress at an early career stage in order to prevent academic and professional burnout and potentially improve clinical performance and patient care
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