Mental Health

Mindfulness improves Mental Health via Two Factors

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Mindfulness has been repeatedly shown to be beneficial for mental health. Training in mindfulness can decrease stress, anxiety, and depression at every level of severity. It can improve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, suicidality, PTSD, substance abuse, eating disorders, and major mental illnesses. It is as yet unclear how such a relatively simple technique could be effective for such a wide range of disparate psychological problems.

Mindfulness may work with very different disorders because it is itself a multifaceted concept. It is usually measured with paper and pencil tests, psychometric instruments. One of the most popular measures is the Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). It contains five subscales that purport to measure observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judgmental awareness, and non-reactive awareness. But, there is an active research discussion whether it may in fact be measuring fewer aspects.

In today’s Research News article “The Serenity of the Meditating Mind: A Cross-Cultural Psychometric Study on a Two-Factor Higher Order Structure of Mindfulness, Its Effects, and Mechanisms Related to Mental Health among Experienced Meditators.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1053095211381071/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4199716/

Tran and colleagues demonstrate that the five different aspects of mindfulness can be best accounted for with two higher-order constructs, Self-regulated Attention and Orientation to Experience in both meditators and non-meditators.

The factor of self-regulated attention refers to the ability to sustain attention on the present moment. This factor is increased by meditation experience and was found to be related to lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression. Central to meditation is training on paying attention to the contents of present moment experience. So, it’s not surprising that meditation training would increase self-regulated attention.

Anxiety is an emotional state that derives from worries about possible future problems. Stress effects are exacerbated by worries produced about the future and memories of past stresses. Depression often is magnified by ruminations about past events and expectations of failure in the future. So, improving the focus on the present moment, as produced by meditation training, should improve these psychological problems by removing the past and the future from adding to the problem.

The factor of orientation to experience refers to an ability to maintain an open, curious, and accepting attitude toward experience. This factor is also increased by meditation experience and was also found to be related to lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression. These issues are all affected by low levels of emotion regulation. The individual cannot control the emotion from prompting maladaptive behaviors. In addition, the lack of regulation allows positive feedback mechanisms to multiply the magnitude of the emotion. This can occur as one becomes anxious about being anxious, stressed by being stressed, and depressed about being depressed. The meditation induced improvement in the ability to be open and accepting of what they’re experiencing, including emotions, can markedly improve the ability to regulate the emotions. In this way meditation can improve emotion regulation and decrease stress, anxiety and depression.

In stress, anxiety and depression the individual can become attached to the state where they incorporate it into their self-concept. This can occur when the individual classifies themselves as a “stress case”, a depressive, or a worrier. The meditation induced improvement in the ability to be open and accepting of what is being experienced can undercut the attachment. One cannot be open and accepting and simultaneously be attached. In this way meditation by reducing attachment can decrease stress, anxiety and depression.

So, meditate and improve psychological health.

CMCS

How do Mindfulness Based Interventions Improve Mental Health

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Mindfulness training has been repeatedly shown to have significant benefits for the individual including improving mental health and wellbeing. It is quite remarkable how ubiquitously effective it is. This suggests that there probably are underlying, mediating, effects of mindfulness that produce its beneficial effects. Although there has been much speculation, it isn’t known exactly what these mediating effects are.

Today’s Research News article, “How do mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction improve mental health and wellbeing? A systematic review and meta-analysis of mediation studies”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1035574819799777/?type=1&theater

summarizes the research on the nature of the intermediaries between mindfulness and mental health and wellbeing and provides suggestive evidence of just how mindfulness training might work.

One mechanism identified is simple and direct. Increases in mindfulness itself can have direct associations with improvements in mental health and wellbeing. Just being in touch with the present moment appears to be sufficient to help. But it also appears that there are secondary consequences of mindfulness training that also influence mental health and wellbeing.

Rumination is characteristic of a number of mental health issues. The individual constantly and persistently replays troubling events or feelings from the past, maintaining and reinforcing their negative emotional effects. The focus on the present moment produced by mindfulness training is an antidote to rumination. Rumination requires a focus on the past. Shifting focus to the present automatically interferes with rumination and may underlie in part the effectiveness on mindfulness training on mental health and wellbeing.

Worry is also characteristic of a number of mental health issues. The individual persistently thinks about possible troubling events or feelings in the future. Worry requires a focus on the future to project the remote possibility of catastrophic events. The focus on the present moment produced by mindfulness training is an antidote to worry. One cannot be simultaneously paying focused attention to the present moment and projecting into the future. This undercuts the ability to worry.

Mindfulness training also tends to promote self-compassion; having loving kindness toward oneself. This induces greater acceptance for one’s problems. In addition, when feeling loving toward oneself, it is impossible to simultaneously have the self-hatred or low self-worth that is so characteristic of mental health issues.

A final possible contributory factor to mindfulness training’s ability to improve mental health and wellbeing is a mindfulness induced increase in psychological flexibility. The individual is better able to see their issues from different perspectives, producing greater understanding and acceptance.

Mindfulness training produces many positive effects. Sorting through which ones are the underlying mediators to improved mental health and wellbeing is important. But, far more important is that mindfulness training works and can be very helpful to people who are suffering from psychological issues.

CMCS

The Mindfulness Cure for Social Anxiety

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It is almost a common human phenomenon that being in a social situation can be stressful and anxiety producing. This is particularly true when asked to perform in a social context such as giving a speech. Most people can deal with the anxiety and can become quite comfortable. But many do not cope well with the anxiety or the level of anxiety is overwhelming, causing the individual to withdraw.

It appears that mindfulness may help greatly with high social anxiety. In today’s Research News article, “How to deal with negative thoughts? A preliminary comparison of detached mindfulness and thought evaluation in socially anxious individuals.”

it is demonstrated that mindfulness training significantly reduces anxiety when asked to give a speech. How does mindfulness training act to reduce social anxiety?

One potential route that mindfulness training may reduce anxiety is by increasing present moment awareness. Looking at what exactly is true in the immediate moment and seeing it as it is, can produce a recognition that social interactions are not threatening and needing to be avoided. When actually paying attention to the conversation and the cues in the environment the individual can relax and performs better. With practice, the improved social skills increase self-confidence. This can result in a cycle with positive gain, over time continuously improving mindfulness and self-confidence and reducing high social anxiety.

Today’s Research News article demonstrated that mindfulness training reduces anticipatory processing. Anticipatory processing is a type of worry about forthcoming social situations, involving anxious predictions, negative recollections, and urges to avoid social events. This anticipation of negative occurrences is a projection into the future. By focusing on the present moment, worries about the future cannot develop. So, the present moment awareness fostered by mindfulness training counteracts anticipatory processing and thereby reduces social anxiety.

Today’s article also demonstrated that mindfulness training reduces observer-perspective. People with high social anxiety often have distorted negative self-images from an observer perspective. They have a distorted idea of how others see them. This negative self-image that they believe is how they are perceived in social situations, maintains and increases anxiety, negative beliefs about social performance, anxious predictions, and poorer actual performance.

Mindfulness training helps to develop non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. Just seeing what is transpiring without adding conclusions about it counteracts the observer-perspective conceptualizations and judgments. When the present moment is simply perceived without coloration from beliefs, ideas, and past experiences, it becomes much less threatening and much more benign, allowing for more comfortable engagement in social interactions.

So, practice mindfulness in social contexts and enhance enjoyment of interacting with others.

CMCS

Why is Mindfulness so Beneficial

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Mindfulness has been demonstrated to have a broad range of positive benefits from improved mental and physical health, see today’s Research News article, “). Standardised Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Healthcare: An Overview of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of RCTs”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4400080/

to the treatment of both physical and mental illnesses, to increases in creativity, to increased happiness, and on and on. I am unaware of anything that is so beneficial to so many things as mindfulness. As an added bonus, developing mindfulness costs nothing and can be done virtually anywhere under any conditions.

Mindfulness sounds too good to be true. How can this be? How can anything do all of this? To understand we must first recognize that we make ourselves miserable and sick. We constantly worry about the future and this creates fear, anxiety, and stress. We constantly and ruminate about the past and this makes us regretful and depressed and lowers our self-esteem.

Mindfulness is about present moment awareness. It recognizes that the past is gone and the future is not here yet. The only thing that matters is now! By moving us away from the misery producing thoughts of past and future, mindfulness immediately removes two processes that have negative impacts on us. In addition, it helps us recognize that the only time we can ever be happy is now! So it shifts our focus to the good things that are always there and present in the present moment.

Mindfulness reduces stress and this can reduce inflammatory responses that are detrimental to our health. We create much of our own stress by driving ourselves toward some future goal or by inordinately worrying about what is actually only a remotely possible catastrophe, or by trying to live up to some glorified image of what we should be or what we should accomplish. Mindfulness is an antidote for all of this. Seeing things as the really are right here right now undercuts the unhealthy striving, relieves the fears, and places realistic perspective on our human condition.

Modern life as we’ve developed it has removed us from the conditions in which we as a species evolved. It has created an artificial world that has become increasingly divorced from nature including our own human nature. Mindfulness is an important treatment for this modern illness. It helps us reconnect to the natural world that is our origin. It helps us reconnect with our own body; physically, mentally, and emotionally. As a result, it relaxes, refreshes, and creates happiness in just being alive.

Mindfulness practices probably would not have been so beneficial centuries ago or in more primitive societies. Most of its benefits emanate from its counteracting the problems that modern life creates. But, in today’s world, its benefits are amplified.

So cultivate mindfulness, the antidote to modern life

CMCS