Posted by Sarah Nocito on April 01, 2019
Most people experience stress at some point in their lives. Stress, especially when severe, can not only make you feel bad, it can also worsen existing health problems like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, depression, and even cancer.
Healthy Mind Healthy You is a new study about how mindfulness can help people cope with stress. Funded by the Patient Centered Outcome Research Institute (PCORI) and involving 19 Patient Powered Research Networks (PPRNs), Healthy Mind Healthy You will be able to study the effects of mindfulness on a wide variety of populations and conditions.
This study is for members of ImproveCareNow. It includes patients, caregivers, and family members.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness means being in the present moment while observing your thoughts and feelings in an open, accepting, and non-judgmental way. When you engage in mindfulness, you usually start by focusing your awareness on your breathing and your body, and then move to your thoughts and feelings.
Mindfulness comes from a long tradition of meditation practice that leads back to Buddhism. However, in this study, mindfulness is completely secular with no religious elements.
What is the purpose of the study?
Healthy Mind Healthy You aims to compare two kinds of mindfulness programs to see which is most effective in reducing stress and increasing well-being: an online, standard, eight-week mindfulness training and an online, three-session mindfulness "light" training. The study may also tell us what groups of people do better with one or the other program.
How does the study work?
2117 participants will be recruited from the 19 PPRNs and will be randomly assigned to either the standard, eight-week program or the three-session mindfulness "light" program. Participants must be at least 18 years old and be members of a PPRN network. Participants will include patients, caregivers, and family members.
All participants will fill out standard well-being assessments every other week to see how they are doing. Participants will also do follow-up assessments after they have completed all sessions. All sessions and assessments will be done online.
--
To receive updates about ImproveCareNow Research, like Healthy Mind Healthy You, join our mailing list >>